


Lascivious

by Noccalula



Series: The Salacious Saga [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Daredevil (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), Luke Cage (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: All Consensual All The Time, Alternate Universe - Sex Shop, Anal Sex, Bisexual Male Character, Bisexuality, Blowjobs, Canon Disabled Character, Cunnilingus, Disabled Character, Discussion of Abortion, Double Penetration, Everyone Is Poly Because Avengers, F/F, F/M, Jane is a bi-curious babe, Lesbian Sex, Light BDSM, M/M, Multi, Oral Sex, Pansexual Character, Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, Pregnancy, Rimming, Rough Sex, Sequel, Sex Shop, Sex Shop AU, Sex Toys, Sexual Experimentation, Threesome - F/M/M, Triads, Unplanned Pregnancy, maxicest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-18 19:54:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 49,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8173993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noccalula/pseuds/Noccalula
Summary: Natasha Romanov, Western Coast Manager of Stark Adult Novelties and Vice President of Stark Inc
 
  Full definition of LASCIVIOUSləˈsivēəs/Submitadjective(of a person, manner, or gesture) feeling or revealing an overt and often offensive sexual desire."he gave her a lascivious wink" 
Following the offer of Vice Presidency and running the entire west coast expansion of Salacious Inc, Natasha Romanov is living in Los Angeles. It's sun, surf and sex as far as the eye can see, but Natasha is still reeling from her failed attempt at a relationship with Clint. Join our favorite sex toy magnate, some familiar friends and plenty of new faces (and genitals) as Natasha continues to explore the expectations of her new and improved job, what happens when you try at love and fail, and the ups, downs, upside-downs, on tops and from behinds of co-running the biggest new name in sex - Stark Incorporated. 
 
  Alternately, When There Is Nothing Left To Burn, You Must Set Your Vag On Fire. 
(Head's up - this is graphically, comically, unflinchingly, gynecologically sexual, just in California this time)





	1. Absence Makes The Vag Grow Fonder

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I said it would be before the end of September, didn't I? I'm central time so I'm sliding in with just an hour to spare before I'm a liar. 
> 
> Head's up to 2 important things:  
> A - You can find me on Tumblr at noccalula-writes now - come say hi  
> B - I'm getting married next weekend, so I'm going to be gone gone gone from Tuesday onwards for a little while
> 
> That said, I couldn't leave you without delivering first. 
> 
> Hope you're all as excited as I am to rejoin Natasha in her many travels.

“Please stay on the line, the conference call will begin shortly.”

There was nothing on the face of the earth than Natasha Romanoff wanted less than for the conference call to NOT begin shortly, much less period. What Natasha wanted was for this pretty little wireless phone set to spontaneously explode so she could leave the office and go back to the beach, get under an umbrella with a book, and never have to speak to another lawyer again. The hold music wasn’t making matters any better: an instrumental version of “This Girl Is On Fire” that made her teeth ache with irrational anger. Elevator hold music, a fate worse than death. It was like being boiled alive in cheap perfume.

Natasha tapped her fingernails along the edge of her smooth white desk – glass and plastic, absolutely gorgeous, perpetually a mess these days – and leaned back to look out the window at the usual view. Ho-hum, just another day in the office, looking outside to see a gorgeous sun over a beautiful sparkling ocean and surfers in the distance making the most of the day. It was one of the less populated stretches of beach in the area what with all the major businesses and strip of shops nearby, but there was always prime people watching opportunity if you knew how to time it right. Nat picked at a hangnail absently as she watched an elderly woman with long silver hair dance slowly in the sun, waving her frail arms up and around in gentle swishes, her flat butt in a sagging bathing suit covered in sand.

“Hello, Ms. Romanoff?”

The voice snapped her back to the reality of the phone call she was about to have to sit through, causing Nat to lurch up straight in her chair.

“Yes, is this Mr. Nelson?”

“It is,” answered the admittedly friendly lawyer on the other line – what was with everyone in California being so goddamn friendly that even the lawyers weren’t all that punchable? – before a short series of beeps brought a third person in on the call.

“This is Pepper Potts, representing Stark Inc. Is everyone present?”

Natasha couldn’t help the little twist under her ribs at the sound of Pepper’s voice. It seemed like just yesterday that she was learning how to run the till at one of two Salacious shops in New York while Tony was doing everything he could to salvage his flagging marriage. It had turned into an ugly nightmare, the extent of which she was sure he never fully revealed to her. Eventually they had finally come to a sort of stasis of acceptance punctuated by Pepper’s agreement to representing Stark Inc in this last leg of the finalizing process before Salacious by Stark Inc was the hottest, newest adult retailer in California (with the former till-paper fucker-upper at its helm).

“Hey Pep,” Natasha said fondly, because sympathizing with Tony didn’t mean she didn’t feel for Pepper too, “Nat here.”

“Natasha,” Pepper responded just shy of warmly, “Good, I see Nelson is here. Let’s get started, this won’t be a terribly long call.”

“Terribly long” had already come and passed by Natasha’s estimation. This call was now moving into “unnecessary and torturous” and would soon arrive at its final destination of “mocking me with its very existence.”

When the legalese began flying Nat zoned out, watching seagulls dart around the too-blue sky. Her office was mostly large windows with transitional shading according to sun position because Tony neither spared any expense nor wanted rows upon rows of dead birds that mirrored glass brings. It wasn’t huge per se, but it definitely tripled if not quadrupled Tony’s veritable broom closet of an office in her home building. This entire place had been whipped up from scratch nearly overnight – any photos she’d seen on her phone or via Skype had done the beautiful white building no justice whatsoever. It was clean lines, geographic harmony and clean, soft lighting with rows and rows of custom racks and displays. The storage room was less shiny but no less clean and new, nary a stain on the concrete and not a bug in sight from the day she first set foot into her new bread and butter. The offices up a small stairway housed both her own and a staff lounge that Natasha was doing her best to make sure didn’t end up doubling as a crash pad since it wasn’t far away from being as nice as her own apartment. The soft (vegan) leather couches, flat screen TV, functional kitchen and PS4 made it a very inviting place to while away the time between shifts for the workers.

Standing to pace the office, Natasha tried to keep an ear trained for choice phrases that would require a “Uh-huh” or “Right” to make it seem like she was clued all the way in to the conversation. It’s not that she wasn’t enjoying her new position: far from it, as it had certainly changed her entire life. Her expenses didn’t eat more than half of what she made, and her rent was completely covered under the expansion for the remaining three months of her six month stay. Summer in California was in full swing and here she was with a beautiful apartment she only paid utilities for and a veritable pocket full of cash. It was only that these pieces – the exacting, painstakingly minute pieces like finalizing the benefits plans for full-time employees and changing the language on the building lease so that there was no risk of lawsuit if someone walked into the door and broke their nose – were as dry as chalk and equally as interesting. Picking the benefits? That had been great. As a former worker, Natasha had plenty of big ideas about how to make sure those who followed her in the path would be taken care of, and Tony had signed off on 90% of it (“I’m already setting our minimum pay at 12 an hour, Natasha, I’m not giving them six months paid maternity and paternity – they’re mostly college students for fuck’s sakes!”). Also, she had finally been able to set her long-recommended structure of a shift manager with a support clerk for money shifts and standard clerks for the slow ones.

This? This was just the rigmarole of bureaucrats in business.

She didn’t yet want to think about the fact that she was, in fact, a bureaucrat in business now. She was even wearing a blazer (linen, because this is California but black because this is Natasha).

Somehow she’d expected some big personality shift to come with the new position – that she would somehow become magically as self-assured as she remembered Pepper to be or as wisely intuitive as the version of her in her own head. She was a ~business woman~ now, a ~business owner~ no less. Her hair touched her shoulders now so she’d begun straightening it, liking the sleek look of the women on Pinterest (guess who had more than one board now) in the Business Woman tag. This of course had been a poorly thought out plan – while she certainly had more hair to look messy, the moderate humidity and constant beach breeze meant pin-straight locks were constantly being wrangled out of place and twisted into just enough wave to look stupid but not enough to look natural. It was a constant battle with the Chi iron most mornings – an amount of effort that Natasha herself could barely believe she was putting into this, but the ritual somehow made her feel more prepared for her day of Being Important and Businessy.

This lack of absolute confidence in the image she was projecting may have been a minor problem for her but at the end of the day, Natasha rested assured in one thing:

She was really, really good at this.

***

The playlist pounding downstairs in the store changed depending on who was behind the counter. Tony had made the (small) investment in Sirius radio so there could be a little more variety than Top 40, and it had paid off magnificently as the main clerks had as varied tastes in music as they had wildly different personalities. As Natasha came down the stairs – carefully, in black wedge sneakers that seemed to balance the need for a heel with the casual-cool of her New Look – she heard Peaches’ “Kick It Up” just short of blaring and knew Jessica Jones was behind the counter.

Jessica had been the first hire for shift manager and was Natasha’s prize jewel in new employees, a find so spectacularly perfect that Nat had done a little dance in her chair after she hung up from the call where she offered the job. Jessica was uncannily tall and pale, whippet thin and sharply pretty but the best thing about her hands-down was her no-bullshit attitude. Nat had concerns that this sort of Joan Jett, I-don’t-give-a-damn-about-my-bad-reputation demeanor might have translated to poor customer skills but on the contrary, Jessica had proven more than effective at not only creating a comfortable environment for the curious to ask questions with her straightforward ways but had the god-given gift to significantly curve shitty pervert behavior by her mere presence. She didn’t suffer fools. Jessica Jones would fix those big dark eyes rimmed in careless, messy liner on some sniveling peon and suddenly he was far less brave than he had been when he walked in with shady intentions.

Highly trainable, a fast study, an impeccable bullshit sensor and the willingness to train new hires once she’d learned the ropes? Perfect.

Also, she was hot. Not that Natasha was prioritizing that in the hiring process. It had been pure coincidence that they all sort of were.

Luke Cage had come next as the second shift manager. If Natasha hadn’t already been sold on hiring him due to his extensive retail management experience and ease with public speaking, Tony would have pushed her to merely so he could eyeball him during training. Gorgeous might have been an understatement. At times, Luke reminded Natasha uncomfortably of Clint with his laid-back but self-possessed demeanor, the kind of guy who had no need to prove himself but walked with the kind of body language that sent a subtle message of “don’t try it”.

Jane Foster spent most of her day in a very extensive grad program for physics and thusly was mostly on afternoon/evening shifts, typically under Jessica. They were an odd pairing, the sort of set up Natasha would have expected in a chick flick about Odd Couple best-friends, or some sort of HBO show about millennials less whiny but just as white as Girls. Jessica’s snark and wit bounced right off of Jane’s absolute sincerity, which tinged a little toward naïve on some days. She was bookish to the Nth degree, a strength that came in handy when explaining basic anatomical uses for various toys or devices. Much like Wanda before her, the adjustment period of comfort discussing anal sex with strangers had been blessedly short. Give Jane the opportunity for science and she could – and would – talk nonstop (“we gotta work on that, she can outtalk ME and that’s gonna be a problem” said Tony once after an unprovoked fifteen minutes on the intricacies of the g-spot controversy in the medical community).

The other clerks – Claire (a nursing student who worked days and took night shifts at the local clinic), Sharon (who as far as Natasha could tell spent whatever time she wasn’t at work at the beach), and Scott (had a felony on his record but a reasonable explanation, didn’t give Natasha the heebie-jeebies, and was surprisingly good with the new POS systems) – came and went in a semi-regular schedule, flexible enough to shift when necessary but structured enough for some predictability. All in all, Natasha’s crew of six internal staff exceeded her expectations when it came to intelligence and willingness to learn.

Pleasantly enough, they were also pretty fun. Training had been a blast – Scott and Jessica sometimes made it hard to keep everyone focused considering their one-liner trade-offs had everyone in stitches and so far, everyone got along exceptionally well. It made her miss Wanda fiercely even though they Skyped several nights a week; Tony kept promising to bring her on his next trip out and Natasha could hardly wait for him to make good.

All things considered, the grand opening of Salacious’s first West Coast store had gone swimmingly. Natasha couldn’t help but wait for the other shoe to drop in true New York cynic style, but so far, so good.

“Hey boss,” Jessica called without looking up, punching in numbers with dexterous fingers on the touch-screen register, “How’s tricks?”

“Got all the lawyer-ing done,” Natasha nearly groaned, coming over to move the bottles of Lelo lube into v-formation, “I’ve got to meet with the copyright protection firm later in the week but aside from that, we’re golden.”

“Cool, sounds like torture,” Jessica responded flatly, pulling up two rolls of quarters and cracking their spines efficiently on the counter’s edge.

“It’s not the most fun thing I’ve done since I got to California but I guess it could be worse.”

A customer loitered in the back nervously near the pocket masturbators, his arms crossed over his chest as he stared intently at the packaging. Anything to keep from potentially making eye contact with anyone else in the joint. Natasha smirked a little, coming over with a small smile as she approached with gentle consideration from the side.

“Hi, anything we can help you find?”

Perhaps the best part about this job was that, as the boss, she was free to wander down and interfere on the sales floor whenever she missed this part of the job. And, she missed this part of the job often.

Jessica, who had already greeted the guy the second he hit the door and was otherwise content to leave him alone, shook her head and counted quarters.

“Uh, no, no,” he responded, dark eyes darting to Natasha’s, then back to the packaging, then back to Natasha to reaffirm that he did in fact just get approached by a really attractive woman in a sex shop, then back to the packaging in sheer terror.

Natasha forced back a chuckle and gave him a pleasant smile/head tilt combo, “Well, if there’s anything you have questions about, don’t be afraid to ask, we’re not shy about anything.”

Another nervous flicker of his gaze over at her came before he fixed his eyes dead ahead, back to touching various packages of the nearby sexy-party games as though this were somehow less scandalous. Natasha relished the moment on her walk back to the front of the store, looking out at the mostly empty parking lot. It was mid-afternoon on a Tuesday and the high of the Grand Opening was wearing off – now would be the time to see how the chips fell with Salacious’s California performance. Projections held that they would make nearly double the income of the Brownsville store in NYC, but as with all new business, the first year was likely to be nothing but cost-recovery. Still, Natasha opted to not be terribly nervous about this until it seemed like there was a reason to be – sex shops had a way of surviving economic drops even when everything else was falling away, and the slight upturn meant the possibility of dismal failure was lower now than it had been in a decade.

It would work out. It had to.

“Good job, boss,” Jessica’s voice pulled Natasha out of her thought-tunnel and back into the light of day, “I’m sure he feels doubly-greeted now.”

Nat glanced over to catch Jessica’s smirk and return it. They spoke the same language on many fronts, including a similarly dry sense of humor (“oh Christ, now there’s two of you, what have we done” – Tony). New Yorkers, after all. Jessica had been a refreshing slab of concrete and gray sky in this new landscape of beach babes and gorgeous sunsets.

“Just trying to make sure he’s not doubly jacking off,” Natasha muttered, coming over to lean her elbows on the glass counter right next to the customary _NO LEANING_ sign.

“Oh, he’s not,” Jessica didn’t look up, jotting down her earnings and time on a pad – she did this, liked to study how the money flow moved through the week, liked to beat her personal best on any given shift, “Trust me, I’ve got a Dick Meter and it would be going off by now.”

“So, it’s a Dick-dar then?” Natasha chuckled, raising an eyebrow at her, “Does it just sense the presence of a penis or does it go off as soon as one gets whipped out?”

“The latter,” Jessica said matter-of-factly.

“Well, more power to you and your psychic dick hunting abilities.”

“It’s less hunting, more seek-and-destroy.”

“Like waving a red flag in front of a bull?”

Jessica smirked, “Something like that.”

Natasha laughed as she moved across the aisle to the boutique, loaded with lingerie, dancing gear and shoes of all kinds for the stripper clientele. At least a quarter of the earnings at her old store came from the dancers and Natasha had always held at the back of her mind that if the opportunity ever arose, she’d push for a bigger selection of higher-quality merch. A local woman who made her own costumes sold to them wholesale along with the bigger retailers like Leg Avenue, guaranteeing a good mix of price scale and durability that Nat hoped would only get bigger and more varied as they put out feelers to independent vendors.

Her cell phone vibrating in her back pocket brought her attention back from its near constant wandering.

“Yes, Commander?”

Tony’s grin from the other side of the country was nearly audible through the phone.

“Hey there Overlord, how’s it going in sunny Californ-I-A?”

“We just finalized the last few line items on the agenda and we’ve got a lunch meeting with Nelson at the end of the week,” Nat casually wandered through lingerie and over to the anal toys, eyeballing the row of gem plugs, “Then we’re golden until the next quarterly or until you locate a new crisis for us to have.”

“I don’t find crises, I find solutions before we even know there are problems,” he responded smugly, shifting the phone to his other ear, “And that’s why I called you, actually, we’ve got a pre-emptive solution to a not-yet-at-our-doorstep problem.”

“Oh?” Natasha didn’t like the sound of that.

“Oh, you don’t like the sound of this, do you?” he chuckled and Nat rolled her eyes.

“You know what they say about preventing wars before they start,” she cautioned sardonically, under zero impression it was going to change his planned course.

“Nope,” he blithely ignored and kept talking, “Folsom Street Fair is coming up in San Fran, and a lot of the leather and fetish retailers flock to get in on the action.”

“Ah,” Natasha looked up to watch Jess ring up Nervous Pocket Pussy Guy, “Market saturation.”

“And during our tender, delicate de-flowering,” Tony observed, “So, since we can’t fight city hall, it behooves us to be in with the in-crowd and stay ahead of the trend, sooo we’re going to have a private retailer bring in a few live fetish models and do an in-house event.”

“’Event’? Like ‘party’ event or like ‘formal’ event?”

“It’s your castle, Nat.”

Natasha bit her lower lip and looked around the building. They had just finished getting everything set up exactly like she wanted it, all the merch perfectly set up and coded, the displays individualized to different parts of the store, the cameras set up so that there were no blind spots in the build, the-

“Natasha?”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll do it,” she almost grimaced as she agreed, knowing it was a good plan but unable to work past the agitation.

Tony sighed, “Listen kid, if you can find a venue there that is willing to host that event without charging us a first born and two kidneys then I have no objection to having it somewhere else.”

“Yesss,” Natasha hissed in relief, pumping a fist down, “Not that I’m not on board with this idea, I’m just fucking exhausted with playing real-life Sims and jenga-ing this store together.”

“Yeah yeah, I know, your baby and whatnot. But find me something in the ballpark we usually work with and we’ll outsource the worst of the process onto someone else’s to-do list, okay?”

“Perfect,” Natasha confirmed, having unknowingly done a full mosey through the entire store and now approaching the counter again.

“Oh, and uh, one more thing,” Tony’s typical casual confidence waivered for only a moment.

Natasha paused, frowning at her phone, “…yeah, Tony?”

“Uh, we got a package here for you, I’m pretty sure it’s from Clint.”

Natasha’s heart froze in her chest, an unbidden ache that made her angry with its power.

“Just hang on to it.”

“You don’t want me to forward it o-“

“No,” Natasha’s tone wouldn’t have belied the depth of her still-lingering hurt to anyone who didn’t know her deeply; Jess didn’t even look up from her phone.

“No, Tony. Just put it somewhere for now.”

***

“And next thing I know, he’s got all three Lelo testers in his arms and he is running for the door like _pow_! Like a shot!”

Wanda slapped one hand into the other, animatedly recalling the tale to Natasha through the slight lag of the internet. Skype has been a blessing these few months – she has her frequent check-ins with Wanda, slightly less frequent ones with Maria (that usually end in mutual masturbation), business meetings from across the country with Tony, and a grand total of one heartbreaking check-in from Cambodia. Every time she thinks the wound has closed over enough that she doesn’t feel sick when she thinks about that moment in the foyer of her old apartment – _Is it him, or the loss of him, or the rejection however gentle that makes her feel like this? Is it her heart or her pride?_ – there’s a skype call, or a random piece of mail forwarded to her new address asking if Mr. Clint Barton wants to enroll with Geico, or a fucking box at her old store. It’s rolling a heartbroken boulder up the Shitty Emotional Hill only to get smushed flat beneath it for the umpteenth time.

But, she doesn’t think about this as much when she and Wanda are laughing on Skype.

“So,” she continued, and it’s impressive how entertaining a storyteller Wanda is once she casts off her defenses, “I do the only thing I can think of to do… I grab Swiffer and trip him, and he goes _BAM_ right into the door, falls right on his face!”

Natasha cackled, “You took out a bandit with a Swiffer, I think you need your own Reader’s Digest article.”

Wanda laughed, having no idea what a Reader’s Digest was but undeterred.

“Tony hears the _thunk_ and comes running out, we have to call an ambulance, it’s a whole mess,” Wanda waved dismissively, “Of course we do not press charges, the goose’s egg was karma enough and he is banned from all Stark stores but still, it was a day.”

Behind her, Pietro moved through the room with a towel around his waist, shirtless and damp haired as he went fishing through a drawer. Natasha craned her neck and smirked; it took Wanda a moment to figure out why but when she did she grinned wickedly. The degree of comfort with this particular subject had hit same level of ‘casual’ that Nat would have had with any boyfriend – the fact that Pietro was Wanda’s own brother just didn’t seem to bother her anymore, however ridiculous the sentence still sounded out loud.

“Pants him!” Natasha yelled, mocking a yanking motion, “We have a no pants policy on Skype!”

Pietro glanced over his shoulder and smirked, grossly handsome as it was, shirking away from Wanda’s long arm whipping out to snag his towel. His laugh was pure mirth and he grinned back down at his sister as he dodged her half-hearted attempts to steal his only covering.

“I am not wearing pants!” Pietro protested through laughter, swatting gently at Wanda’s outstretched hand.

The way they looked at each other, the sound of both of them laughing, made Natasha smile. Beneath that happiness for both of them, that Clint-shaped ache persisted.

 

 


	2. A Vag In Time Saves Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Franklin laughed a surprisingly disarming laugh and shook his head of equally surprisingly long hair, “No, I apologize if we come off as that stingy but we definitely treat our clients to lunch."_
> 
>  
> 
> _“Well, if Foggy had his way, we’d be buying everyone dinner too.”_
> 
>  
> 
> _An odd nostalgia twisted like a fistful of sheets in Natasha’s stomach and she looked up slack-jawed, straight into the face of apparently ‘Foggy’ – Foggy? - Foggy’s partner. He was as strikingly handsome as always, ever a good-looking boy and even more so with the last of his baby fat lost to the strong angle of his jaw and without the dweeby haircut. His red-tinted glasses rested across the bridge of a nose she knew immediately had been broken on more than one occasion. His suit was sharp – expensive – and he smugly smiled in Natasha’s general direction as he rested both hands atop his cane._
> 
>  
> 
> _He laughed, “Hi, Natasha.”_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Enter College Boyfriend Matt Murdock, stage right.
> 
> Or, Natasha hates nostalgia.  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  For those of you who are following me on tumblr - http://noccalula-writes.tumblr.com - already know the following apology by heart, but here goes for everyone else: 
> 
> After the election, I've been a little too emotionally drained and otherwise completely exhausted to do much of anything in the vein of writing. It's been a solid month of nothing but sleeping too much or too little, working my usual steady schedule (in a program that Mike Pence disabled in his own state, so there's a brand new fear), and playing entirely too much Skyrim. This wasn't really nice or not nice, just a necessity while I worked on getting through the other side of my sadness and shock at the turn of events I won't even go into on AO3. Just know that, as a queer woman who recently married her partner and as a career activist/advocate, I've had a tough time dealing. 
> 
> That said, writing is my self-care. It's part of my therapy. It's my escape, my hobby, my passion and one of my major joys, and I've just had no love for it until the last two weeks where I forced myself to get back on the ball, whether I liked it or not. And, lo and behold, while those first few paragraphs and pages came shakily and were far from my best work, it's getting easier again the more I do it. Gotta keep sharpening the weapons, whether you feel like it or not, whether you feel like what you're writing is terribly important or any good or of any consequence or not. 
> 
> So, I'm getting back into the swing of things, and I apologize for the absence. I hope all of you are doing well, and I'll stop yammering now and get on with it. 
> 
> EXCEPT that's a lie, one more thing, reader Onaa sent me a gorgeous piece of Natasha fan art that's perfect for Salacious Saga Nat, so I'll be uploading that with the link info for the artist with the next chapter. 
> 
> Now I'm done. I think. 
> 
> Hey.
> 
> Thank you.

 

 

 

Natasha had been hoping that California would turn her into someone different. Maybe not “different” per se – not as in a different person with a whole new personality – but perhaps just “better.” The West Coast vibes of being relaxed, in touch with one’s inner sanctum, loosely wound and sexy and easygoing were infectious, she’d noticed from her very first stay. She was surrounded by beautiful people whose only concerns were the beach and partying and while the New Yorker she would always be scoffed, the Natasha who desperately wanted to move on from this failed experiment called Clint & Co-habitation was enchanted. Thirty was still rapidly approaching at summer’s end and the list of things she still needed to figure out had precious few checkmarks on it – any movement upward was going to be considered progress.

Her apartment was beautiful, pre-furnished and immaculate and requiring very little of her own upkeep. Natasha wasn’t ultra-organized by nature but circumvented most of the problems of a messy person by owning very little shit; her wardrobe had been pared down upon arrival to rid herself of things she just wasn’t wearing and what little she owned in the way of leather jackets or cold-weather accoutrement were loaded into a storage bin and put in the attic post-haste. The few personal touches of her NYC apartment lingered around but did somehow seem fully different here in California, all the exposed brick of her East coast loft traded out for the sleek white walls and cheery, luxe interior of Santa Monica’s particular California style.

Most surprising had been how quickly she’d taken up yoga in the desperate attempt to quiet her own mind. Tony had dragged her to a morning Bikram class during their inaugural visit – he spent four days not only helping her get the store set up but helping with her apartment too – and much to her surprise, she didn’t hate it. The super-heat was too much for her to want to return regularly but the stretching had felt nice, a throwback to the ballet classes of her youth. The local health food co-op held cheap drop-in classes three mornings a week and though there was nothing she wanted to do more than sleep in for that extra hour and a half, Natasha forced herself up and out of bed and trudged down the block with her eight dollar TJ Maxx mat under her arm.

Months later, Natasha rolled out of her king-sized bed, pulled on some shorts and took the same mat out onto her balcony to start the day with sun salutations.

Mashed avocado on toast and a black coffee later, she was straightening her hair and getting ready for work. Twenty minutes later, she was en route to the store. Ten minutes en route, she arrived. It was a simple routine but she had it perfected down to a science now and while it might have gotten monotonous had she not so many other things to worry about, there was comfort in the predictability.

Jane was sitting on the floor rearranging fetish mags when Natasha walked in, chiming the bell with her smoothie in hand (living near the beach = great excuse to consume smoothies copiously).

“Hi Natasha,” she called up from the floor, her skinny legs crossed in tight jeans and the periodic table on the case of the cell phone resting in her lap, “Jessica’s upstairs in the lounge, said she had to make a call.”

“Okay,” Natasha barely processed the statement, still mulling how weird it was to walk in after opening hours without having to do any sort of opening procedures, “How are you this morning?”

“I’m good,” Jane responded blithely, “My boyfriend is bringing us lunch if you want anything, just let me know before eleven.”

“You can refer to him as ‘Thor’, I know who he is,” Natasha smirked, coming by to kick gently at a stack of BDSM posters, mindful not to knock them over, “What are these for?”

“Mr. Stark had them FedEx’d over, I figured you might know better than we did but I figured we could put a few up in the store and then leave a stack by the community board.”

Natasha’s own idea, the community board housed not only flyers and posters for brands and events but business cards for professional dommes and subs in the area, Dungeons looking for patrons, dancers looking to train fledglings. This was beneficial for a few reasons but the biggest was that it allowed Natasha – and by extension her employees – to get familiar with the who’s who of the deviant scene in Santa Monica. A burlesque troop dropped by every month with a new flyer for their upcoming themed show – Quentin Tarantino theme coming up in two weeks, anything after that was anybody’s guess. The local dungeon put up a notice regarding a change of venue. The Dollhouse adult club left cards that would waive the admission fee. There were all sorts of ways to stay connected to the ground floor and Nat had been quick to teach her apprentices that the best way to cater to a market like this one was to know what was good and grimy in the area they served.

“Huh,” Nat peered over and shrugged, disregarding it quickly to head upstairs, “Must be drumming up interest for the fetish festival up north.”

“Uh-huh,” Jane said distractedly, eyes scanning the cover of a lesbian BDSM mag for a few seconds longer than the others.

“Closet case,” Jessica muttered under her breath as she passed Natasha on the stairs, pointing down at the clerk before whirling back around to look up at her boss, “Hey, by the way, I think I’ve got a place for our leather-daddy shindig if you’re interested.”

Natasha, who hadn’t even noticed Jessica coming down the stairs until she was already past her (sneaky sneaky), raised an eyebrow, “Oh yeah?”

Jessica shrugged her narrow shoulders, the well-worn Clash shirt hanging on her artfully in that modelesque way she had about her. Natasha considered that Jess might actually be the bigger mismatch transplant of the two of them – she screamed New York from her head to her feet.

“My sister does a radio show, she’s got some connections. Got a restaurant that might be game, just gotta ask.”

“By all means, ask,” Nat gestured with her cup, “Worst they can do is tell us no, right?”

Jessica nodded, heading back down towards Jane and her multiple stacks of stuff.

“Oh, hey! Don’t forget I have a meeting with the lawyers this afternoon,” Nat half-yelled from the top of the stairs as she dug out her office door key.

“Bully for you,” Jessica called back flatly, “Try not to sell any of our souls, okay? I’ve been collecting all of mine for a long time.”

 

***

 

The sunny sidewalk of the café was almost reminiscent of New York if Natasha was able to disregard literally everything around it. It reminded her of the best parts of Brooklyn, all the little shops and small restaurants, only with a sunnier and brighter filter over the entire affair. Instead of the patented smell of New York Concrete there was ocean in the air and sure enough she could hear the waves crashing faintly in the background. The quotient of conventionally attractive people was much higher here in California as well, a detail she hadn’t quite put her finger on for some weeks upon arrival, like a word somewhere on the tip of her tongue that she just couldn’t spit out. It was in a spin class – her first and last – that she had finally noticed that literally everyone in class with her looked like an actor or a porn star. “Beautiful.” Very conventional, traditional, western beauty – big tits, flat stomachs, tan skin, cut arms. The arms on some of these men made her feel sick when she looked at them too long, remembering the hard-earned dips and valleys in Clint’s biceps, how much she used to love biting into them.

This was yet another of the biggest things she missed about New York: it’s diverse beauty. It was a mish-mash, a melting pot of absolutely everything under the sun, every kind of feature or tone or slant or curve, and to her it was infinitely more beautiful than whatever the entertainment machine had set as precedent so close to Los Angeles.

Still, the weather was wonderful, she had to begrudgingly admit. She bounced her crossed legs, absently dangling an espadrille wedge from her toes as she looked over the menu for the thirteenth time. The lawyers were late. That had to be a bad sign.

“Miss Romanoff?” came the familiar voice – the lawyer on the phone – and Natasha snapped her eyes up to find a surprisingly young looking man watching her with a mixed expression.

“Mister Nelson?”

He scoffed, reaching out a hand for a surprisingly firm shake and a pleasant smile, “Mister Nelson is my dad, you can call me Franklin.”

Natasha wondered if he’d be encouraging her to call him “Franklin” if she were a middle-aged white male client and suspected that somehow, yes, he probably would. The guy seemed genuinely pleasant and it was a nice change from the gallows she’d been mentally walking toward for this entire lunch.

“My partner is on his way, he travels a little slower than I do,” he thumbed over his shoulder, pulling one of the chairs at the square table and having a seat, “But we don’t have too terribly much to go over, just a couple of formalities and then our standard contract with the invoice.”

“Just the usual,” Natasha echoed with character-typical dryness, “This lunch on my bill, too?”

Franklin laughed a surprisingly disarming laugh and shook his head of equally surprisingly long hair, “No, I apologize if we come off as _that_ stingy but we definitely treat our clients to lunch.”

“Well, if Foggy had his way, we’d be buying everyone dinner too.”

An odd nostalgia twisted like a fistful of sheets in Natasha’s stomach and she looked up slack-jawed, straight into the face of apparently ‘Foggy’ – _Foggy?_ \- Foggy’s partner. He was as strikingly handsome as always, ever a good-looking boy and even more so with the last of his baby fat lost to the strong angle of his jaw and without the dweeby haircut. His red-tinted glasses rested across the bridge of a nose she knew immediately had been broken on more than one occasion. His suit was sharp – expensive – and he smugly smiled in Natasha’s general direction as he rested both hands atop his cane.

He laughed, “Hi, Natasha.”

“Matt?” her voice cracked incredulously, eyes flying over to Franklin – _Foggy_ – who grinned ear to ear.

“Are you serious!?” she stood up, coming in for a reflexive hug, immediately struck by a warm, musky cologne and how hard and solid he felt.

Matt had boxed as long as she’d known him, much longer even, so it was no surprised that he was so goddamn ripped. Natasha felt like she’d been sucker punched by nostalgia when his arms came up around her warmly and she remembered a hundred nights at Columbia with no fear, no regret, only a lot of laughing and even more really, really good sex. Jesus, it was good sex. Really fucking good s-

“Natasha?”

Nat snapped back, a little embarrassed by how long she’d been hugging him while her mind raced but she recovered as smoothly as a cat caught on the counter, dropping back into her chair and turning to put her hand on Foggy’s arm.

“Franklin ‘Foggy’ Nelson!” she smacked him slightly for emphasis, and he chuckled, “You were Matt’s roommate, I knew that name sounded familiar!”

Foggy patted her arm back affectionately before picking up a menu, “I wouldn’t blame you for not remembering me, we only ever saw each other in passing.”

The implication hung in the air and Matt smirked, having a seat himself. Natasha cut her eyes over at Matt and tried not to grin.

“You sneaky bastard.”

“I’m sorry, I should have said something sooner,” he chuckled, turning more towards her, “I heard the name ‘Natasha Romanoff’ and knew I had to take the case and come see what you were up to. Needless to say, I wasn’t much expecting you to be co-running a sex toy retailer and yet, somehow I’m not all that surprised.”

Nat laughed and tried to seem less on edge than she actually was. Seeing Matt was in no way unpleasant – on the contrary, it was a lovely reminder of just how well she’d done for herself at one point in time and the fact that he’d only become more and more aggressively good-looking was doing wonders for her ego – but it was still a jolt, something she would have liked the opportunity to have prepared for. Cursing her lack of investigation into Mr. Nelson and his firm, she shook her head and took a swig of her water, determined to move forward as gracefully as possible.

“Well, good to know my selling dildos doesn’t shock you.”

Matt laughed an only-half uncomfortable laugh as the quickest of red flushes moved up his cheeks.

_Good to know my joking about selling dildos still **would** shock you_.

 

***

 

“If that isn’t some bad fanfiction shit, I don’t know what is.”

Maria filed her nails casually in front of her webcam, blue eyes even more piercing against the poorly-filtered light as she reclined back in front of one of her many well-decorated shelves of sparse, neat tchotchkes. Not only did seeing Maria’s face make Natasha miss home, seeing her interior decorating did too. How many nights she’d wiled away in that apartment, fucking or complaining or eating Maria’s expensive snack food were beyond her count but they all blurred together into a fond memory stew of sorts. A bit of laughing in bathrobes here, a bit of squirting orgasms there, a really fucking fantastic cheese plate elsewhere; until Natasha had found the brownstone she now saw snippets of in her twice weekly minimum Skypes with Wanda, it had been the most home-y, reliable place she ever spent any real time. She eyed a Williams Sonoma candle on the shelving behind Maria and remembered the way the place always smelled so clean.

“Tell me about it,” Natasha lamented before nabbing a sip of her fancy bottled kombucha, almost fully hiding the grimace this time, “I spent the entire evening trying desperately to think of anything fucking weirder that could have happened to me and I’m drawing a blank.”

Maria double-blinked, “You mean like you applying to become a sex shop cashier and ending up the VP of its parent company in like, three years or less?”

“Shut up.”

“Or you finding out your coworker is having a secret romantic and sexual relationship with her twin brother?”

“Maria, I swear to god.”

“Or falling in love with a fucking mercenary wh-“

“Kombucha fucking sucks, why the hell do people drink this garbage?!” Natasha exclaimed with sudden ferocity, drowning out the rest of Maria’s poorly thought out statement with the only emotion she’d allow herself to have at the moment, “This seriously tastes like I’m drinking a douche.”

Maria caught herself partway through the outburst and remembered that maybe now wasn’t the fucking time, her lips tightening into a thin line, “…sorry, Nat.”

“Me fucking too, this shit was five goddamn dollars,” Natasha obliquely continued, tossing the glass bottle into the trash but pausing long to stare after it, “…no, fuck, I really need to recycle that.”

“You know what I meant, though I _am_ sorry about the kombucha, I could have told you it was vile.”

“Yeah,” Natasha finally cut her eyes back to the screen to seek out Maria’s for a brief moment of analysis, finding her friend a lot more visibly ashamed than she’d ever seen her, “Don’t worry about it.”

As a fellow expert in changing the subject rapidly, Maria unscrewed the lid on a water bottle and continued, “So, I guess the big question is what’s going to happen now? The only time I ever heard you mention College Boyfriend Matt Murdock was when you needed to brag about how amazing the sex was or whatever.”

“Well, I have zero intention of fucking him,” Natasha responded dourly, “A, he’s with the firm my company is using for copywrite protection so I’m not gonna shit where I eat if I can help it at all and B, I’m on a strict no-feelings diet.”

“Clearly, you’re murdering your own taste buds with mushroom vinegar.”

With a shrug, Natasha leaned back into her chair and pondered for a long moment, “I mean… I have so few memories of him that aren’t just partying and fucking, the only substance we really had was that we were both witty and could one-liner each other like it was foreplay. Other than that, I can honestly say that entire year was a blur.”

“Ecstasy and Russian Literature,” Maria remarked, finally putting down the file, “Sounds like a book you should have written.”

Natasha snorted and rolled her eyes.

Indeed, most of her fondest memories of College Boyfriend Matt Murdock were explicit and neon-bright in the dark, flashes of memory in a whirlwind of bad behavior and youthful insouciance. It was all intense, frequent sex and risk taking – the Russian scholar and the blind law student tearing a hole in the city nightlife for a full 365 before it ended just as suddenly as it had begun.

Maria clicked away at the keyboard for a moment before raising her eyebrows, “Huh, well, he’s an attractive one, he’s on the website for the firm.”

“You seriously never looked him up until now? I’ve googled all your ex’s.”

“Oh, all two of them?” Maria laughed, “No, I can’t say I google anyone but myself to make sure my name and address aren’t on a pro-life hit squad page or something.”

“Fair enough.”

“Listen, though.”

Natasha looked back at the screen, a small knot of dread at having to listen to whatever well-intentioned advice was coming thanks to Maria’s still unassuaged guilt over the Clint comment. She knew the people in her life that kept bringing him up meant well; she just fucking wished they’d stop doing it. It severely interfered with the whole “pretending it didn’t happen” thing. Indeed, Maria looked at her as earnestly as she’d ever seen her, shrugging as if to take the edge off the suggestion.

“I’m not saying I don’t enjoy our Skype dates, even when we end up complaining instead of masturbating, but you’ve got to get some actual human interaction. The Hitachi is going to catch fire and burn your nice new apartment down.”

Natasha laughed despite herself, despite her sadness, and raked a hand back through her hair with a defeated sigh.

“Go out, get laid, maybe not with the ex because I am one hundred percent with you, that seems like a big can of worms you don’t really need right now,” Maria cautioned, “But go, I dunno, touch somebody. Make skin-to-skin contact. Flirt. Get back on the horse.”

“But I hate the horse,” Natasha moaned.

“You do _not_ hate the horse,” Maria corrected, almost motherly, “You’re just really mad at the horse right now.”

“I hate the horse,” Natasha muttered lower, pouty and knowing she seemed like a sullen child but unable to care.

“Whatever the case, Natasha, just do yourself a solid and put all this California wellness crap you’re currently obsessing over into action and actually apply it somewhere that’s going to benefit _you_ , the _actual_ you, not the version of _you_ you think you have to be.”

“’K, Doctor Phil.”

Maria narrowed those steely blue eyes into the camera, “ _Someone_ has passed their threshold to take well-intentioned advice tonight.”

With a sigh, Natasha had to concede the battle. The tightening coil of confrontation with a friend was settling into her stomach and as little as she wanted to hear anything Maria had to say on the subject, she knew that her friend was only trying to help. Still, she wasn’t one hundred percent sure any of this advice truly was valuable – sex certainly was something she missed, the self-imposed pseudo-celibacy of arriving in California due far more to a sudden unwillingness to be vulnerable with anyone paired with the equally sudden considering sex to be vulnerable at all. This had never been a problem for Natasha, who’d always been told she had a man’s sensibility about sex (whatever in the fuck that was supposed to mean, as though one gender had a patent on emotional detachment, as though it had any inherent moral meaning one way or another) and never really equated the two pieces without special circumstances.

Circumstances like Clint.

Maybe it was time to get back on the horse.

“No, I’m sorry,” Natasha relinquished, raising her hands, “I’m not good company tonight, it’s not your fault, I’m gonna hit the hay I think.”

Maria hesitated, sucking her teeth, “…you sure you don’t wanna fool around at least a _little_ bit?”

Natasha couldn’t help but laugh, rubbing her forehead, “Jesus, you’re ambitious, your lady-boner can survive all things.”

“You know me, I get a little turned on by confrontation,” Maria said casually, producing a purple vibrator from out of the shot and angling the camera, “Besides, we could both use the oxytocin.”

By the time Natasha had wrung at least one good orgasm out of her (increasingly unresponsive) pussy, Maria had two and was eating ice cream between dirty talking her companion the rest of the way. Some girls really did have all the luck.

 


	3. Once In A Blue Vag

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Natasha considered for a moment, keys in hand despite the fact that this weird fucking car started with the press of a button. Old habits, even if she didn’t drive in New York. The irritation had subsided as quick as it came and she knew without having to think too hard about it that the raw wound, the big one, was getting sensitive to poking. The insinuation of sleeping with an ex – sleeping with anybody, actually – would be acceptance that the game with Clint had been fully lost and it was time to move onto the next thing. Talking to a friend about it was a tempting offer but there was still the deeply set trench between her life in New York and her life in California, and even just saying Clint’s name here felt like dragging a corpse from one side to the other. Jessica didn’t know that story. Natasha didn’t want to tell it, not again._
> 
>  
> 
> Natasha gets a venue with the help of Jessica's kinda famous sister and struggles with splendid isolation. But not in the same scene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys. 
> 
> I won't give you the full blow by blow except to say that if you're at all interested in where the hell I've been for the last 5 months / why the radio silence, hop on over to http://noccalula-writes.tumblr.com and check the updates tags. It's been a really, really intense few months and I'm not being dramatic. The short version: our 11 year old dog - whom I raised from 5 weeks and had all through my twenties - developed cancer and had to be put to sleep. My wife got a job offer 5 states / 13 hours away, and we only had 3 weeks for me to quit my job, break our lease and for us to pack and move from Florida to Ohio where we know exactly one person from the internet we'd never met in person beforee. Car broke down fatally on the trip up. Had to have said internet friend fly down and help us finish moving up. It was a fucking fiasco. 
> 
> But I'm here, I'm kind of starting to recover from all the trauma and shakeup, and the writing gears are turning again. 
> 
> Exciting news coming with the next update, which shouldn't be far away, thank you all for your patience and concern as a few of you reached out to check on me. I appreciate you all. <3 
> 
> Enjoy some Natasha.
> 
> \- Noccalula

 

_Junior Year_  
  
_Natasha lay in the dark of Matt’s apartment, panting softly as her eyes squeezed shut against the onslaught of sensation between her legs. College Boyfriend Matt Murdock’s fingers – calloused and a little crooked from boxing breaks – dug into the soft pale of her open thighs while her fingers twined tightly in his hair, that grown-out bowl cut that every guy in their age group had at the time. Sparks corkscrewed up into her spine with every lave of his tongue, the pull of his mouth on the slick lips of her pussy, the way he moaned into her. The curling of her spine brought her back up off the surface of the desk he’d pinned her down to mere moments after getting in the door, hips bearing down to press harder against his mouth, anything to make it more, harder, stronger. Fucking Matt was like jamming a fork in a light socket in the best way possible, but he was a goddamn wizard with his tongue._

_“Fuck,” she whimpered, shifting as her thighs jerked and trembled._

_Matt purred back his assent and went in deeper, lightly stubbled chin against her opening, lips and tongue pulling at her clit, hot breath coming against her bare shaven skin. The radio bleated from another room – Duran Duran’s “Come Undone”, appropriately enough, a song that would send a quick jolt straight to Natasha’s pussy for years anytime she caught it playing in public thanks to this memory – and the blue lights from Matt’s computer cast a glow on the high points of his shoulders, the shine of his red glasses resting on the floor. Something about that moment imprinted itself so deep into Natasha’s memory that even nearly a decade later she could recall the placement of all Matt’s furniture, carefully arranged to mind his mobility and cane, the way his apartment smelled like cinnamon air freshner over some sort of vanilla candle, and how the sweat of her back had her sticking to the plastic._

_The first sharp shot of her impending orgasm fired through her and she arched even harder, fingers tightening on his hair, pressing the back of his head until she could feel the hard pressure of his jaw against her pubic bone. He swept his tongue over her clit one, two, three more times and it was like being electrified, her back gone bowstring tight, mouth gaping open as she stammered out a moan like a desperate, shocked question as she felt the entirely new and strange sensation of herself ejaculating._

_Eyes wide, she tried to scramble into sitting up but only sort of succeeded in lazily flailing one arm while she craned her neck, a hot flush moving up her face that took a moment to register as searing embarrassment._

_“Wha…?” she tried, panting and staring down at Matt’s shadowy head for answers, horrified that she had grossed him out beyond repair. It would be another year or so before Natasha would have any sort of regular porn consumption, enough to know squirting was a big fetish anyway, and all she could think was that maybe she had in fact peed in Matt’s face and now he was never, ever going to fuck her again._

_“Matt?” she managed to croak as he lifted his head, smiling with his face glistening wet, chuckling in amusement._

_“Ah,” he sighed with the smug exhaustion of a job well done, “What, has that never happened to you before?”_

~~~

Present Day

The Crimson was a well-known trendy spot in downtown Santa Monica that had played host to a number of high-profile, eyebrow raising events that year. Half of its notoriety came from it’s semi-regular celebrity clientele, the other half from a willingness to engage in taboos in their various and sundry forms. Trish Walker – far more blonde and statuesque in person than she’d been on the billboard Natasha knew her face from – explained that they had hosted the 50 Shades of Gray cast party, either missing or pointedly ignoring the look that passed between Jessica and Natasha at the mere mention. The walk down the strip was blessedly short from where Nat had been dropped off by her Lyft driver, feeling very New York cosmopolitan with the model-esque company and the quick trek down the sidewalk at sunset, the lights and car horns a comfort that could almost be mistaken for home if not for the sharp smell of Pacific salt in the air. Jessica flanked Natasha on her right side, Trish on her left, and it was nice to be going somewhere with women again, even if only one of them was someone she knew.

California was wonderful, but it still didn’t feel like home. Having no friends didn’t help.

“Now, I can talk to Vanessa about hosting a dinner space or just a party, I wasn’t sure what would be more…” Trish gestured for a moment, trying to gracefully articulate her point, “ _Suiting_ to your clientele for this one.”

“We don’t work in a brothel, Trish,” Jessica said flatly.

“True, but a lot of these events can get crazy,” Natasha countered for balance’s sake, “I’ve seen them turn into orgies before, so there’s going to be extra emphasis that this is an exposition event only and not an actual game night. But we need a ballpark cost before we can commit to anything.”

“And they’ll need a ballpark number before they can give you a ballpark cost, so be thinking of what your goal for attendance is,” Trish responded, not necessarily clipped but very businesslike on the matter.

Natasha cut her eyes over, trying to get a temperature read on the woman from body language since her speech wasn’t as easy a tell. She kept her hands in the pockets of her sleek jacket, eyes mostly ahead. She looked nothing like Jessica, really.

“Gee, thanks Trish, I’m sure she wasn’t completely aware of that,” Jessica shot back. Natasha got the distinct sensation of being in the middle of a firefight. Then again, maybe this was normal – Nat had no siblings to speak of, and Clint and Barney had always talked about fighting a lot when they were younger.

“No, I-“ Trish cut herself off and looked over at Natasha with sincerity, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to talk down to you, I’m kind of a micromanager.”

“Kind of?” echoed Jessica with mock surprise.

“Fuck off, Jess. What I mean is this particular business is competitive, they host a lot of high-bill social events and I think this’d be excellent exposure for your brand, but they have to know it’s not going to turn into Leather Daddies On Parade in there before they’re willing to take the risk.”

Natasha smirked, a little surprised someone like Trish Walker knew the term ‘leather daddies’ but otherwise as unruffled as always, “Well aware. My only plan here tonight is to get a temperature read on the venue and see if the price is amiable.”

They reached the gated entrance of the restaurant, a remarkably lovely courtyard filled with jacaranda trees and matijilia poppies and sage plants among the thick, waxy looking succulents just beyond, the lights glowing bright in the windows as well-dressed waiters moved in and out of view. Natasha felt the tightening of anxiety in her gut; there were a zillion good dives in New York that could have hosted this event and made it feel just as sexy and dirty as they wanted, but as she stood and stared at this beautiful little villa of a restaurant, she realized it might be just a hair too pretentious for her. Then again, wasn’t Salacious looking to appeal to the West Coast sentimentality that the East Coast branches didn’t have to bother with? Wasn’t this the entire point of expansion?

Trish pushed open the gate and Jessica threw a glance back at Natasha, who unflappably kept moving with her best poker face. Still, Jessica’s gaze lingered a little long, as if she could see something there that may not have been so obvious to anyone else.

“You good?”

Natasha nodded at her, passing through the arched entrance and into the warmth of the restaurant itself.

The visit itself was remarkably pleasant. Vanessa Marianna was the restauranteur with whom Trish had arranged the meeting, a beautiful woman with a vaguely European accent and an impeccable dress that kept an appraising eye quietly on Natasha the entire time. Mettle testing mettle. Natasha respected that – hell, she’d felt the same way about Pepper, watching her with a wordless respect and trying to hold her own as naturally as possible. The Crimson was open to the event, Vanessa had offered, on the good faith that it would walk the fine line between risqué and bacchanal.

“Of course, we understand that your brand may have a different aesthetic in mind than ours, and we want to make sure our interests are aligned and mutually beneficial.”

Natasha forcibly kept herself from raising an eyebrow at the obtuse but pointed language, nodding and holding eye contact at pain of losing any footing in this oddly tenuous discussion, “Our aesthetic is consistent with our environment, which is meant to keep our customers comfortable with exploration and open to learning. Anything too forward can put off new clientele or first-time buyers.”

Trish chanced a longer look at Natasha. Clearly she’d underestimated her ability to play ball here, assuming that if the likes of her sister spoke so highly of her this VP was probably something a little more…crass, maybe? Impressively, she was holding her own with someone like Vanessa Marianna, much-prized art gallery owner who had expanded out into restauranteur with whatever spare time she apparently had. Still, best to be clear on all matters, and Trish jumped into the discussion as soon as an opening came.

“It’s important to note that this isn’t the same crowd that came for 50 Shades. It may seem to the uninitiated that it would be a similar set of clients, but Miss Romanoff has been very clear that there’s a big divide.”

Natasha cut her gaze from Trish back to Vanessa, expecting some sort of blowback for the distinction. Perhaps it would seem too risky no matter her assurances, as though they were planning a full on Crisco-orgy no matter how they presented themselves.

Much to the surprise of all three – Jessica actually smirked – Vanessa let out a small laugh and waved her hand as if to dismiss the notion.

“Well of course they aren’t, yes? 50 Shades of Gray is garbage.”

~~~

And so it came to pass that The Crimson would be host to Salacious West Coast’s Leather E-Xhibit (“Is the rapper going to sue us?” – Jessica) in their gorgeous reception hall for half the price of a standard event (still expensive but not prohibitively so). Three dollars of every five dollar Red Headed Slut (Natasha’s graciously accepted tribute from the staff suggestion pile) would go to a local LGBTQ health clinic, and the coverage for the event would be scant but effective. It was hardly a red carpet premiere but any party in this part of Santa Monica got attention, and the queerer the better. Natasha’s new byway with not only Trish Walker but Vanessa Marianna looked damn good on paper and she was keen on a few good photo ops for the store’s social media (now managed by Nat herself, soon hopefully to be someone else’s problem). The entire event fell into place much faster than anticipated and without much fuss, the typical laid-back California attitude a weird break from New York neurosis, especially where event planning was concerned.

The staff meetings – every other Tuesday, an hour in the late morning since much like New York, save the odd Porn Emergency, customers didn’t start filtering in until at least 11:30am – now had an extra half an hour of party planning. The trouble with this is that a group of such variant personalities all had different ideas about what constituted a good “party”, especially in concern to a work event. The other trouble was that getting Scott Lang and Jessica Jones in the same room always lead to a battle of wits that easily distracted everyone else; the buttplugs seemed to be a hot topic of conversation lately.

“I’m just saying, how do you respond to that professionally without losing your shit, pun intended?” Scott pointed at Jessica, barely concealing his own smirk.

“It’s easy, Lang, I have a decent poker face and you don’t.”

Scott laughed but switched gears, pointing across at Jane where she sat taking notes on a legal pad, “I’m just glad it wasn’t Marie Curie over there. Could you imagine? ‘Oh no, that’s not how the sphincter works at all, it’s a muscle!’”

The laughs drew pink onto Jane’s cheeks but she shrugged as casually as she could and put down her pen, looking indignant, “I don’t see how it would have been wrong to explain to them the way an anus actually works. Clearly these customers were very ill-informed about their own bodies. And by the way, Marie Curie was a chemist.”

Natasha wanted to move along and stay on task but this was distracting to say the least. She sighed in faux-exhaustion, ever the put upon boss, and shook her head, “Could we maybe get back on task for a moment before we tumble down into chaos like always?”

“Someone walked in here and literally, _literally_ , asked if the purpose of a butt plug was to keep poop from falling out of your ass if you’ve had too much anal,” Scott countered to another smattering of laughter, still clearly delighted, “That is a real thing that actually happened in the place I work. That bears a much bigger discussion than a passing chuckle. I’ll be telling my grandchildren this story. This is a highlight for my entire life.”

“How sad,” Jane muttered, back to flipping through a BDSM magazine for inspiration. Natasha made a mental note to check in with her afterward, poor easy target that she often was for the teasing that liked to fly around this joint.

“Horrifying customer questions aside,” Natasha raised a hand, finally getting this meeting back by the reins, “We really do have a few things to discuss before we’re able to-“

“Hey boss,” Claire braced both arms in the doorway to stick her head in, both eyebrows up, “The lawyer is here to see you? Also could you have maybe mentioned that our lawyer is fine as hell?”

A chorus of interested ‘ooo’s came from several different parties as Natasha pulled herself up from her seat with some degree of nervous surprise. They were supposed to send over the finalized copies of the trademark documents but that had hardly been expected to be hand-walked, least of ways by an attorney himself. The musing was stupid and Natasha knew it – she knew why Matt was standing in a sex shop asking for her by name. She’d felt the jolts of attraction that had first sent them spiraling into each other’s paths all the way back in college as soon as she heard his voice at that lunch, buried somewhere deep and not as acute but still unmistakable. _Fuck. So much for not shitting where you sleep, Romanov._

Standing and smoothing her dress – drawing another chorus of “ooo” and “who are YOU trying to impress?” (Jessica, naturally) – Natasha turned and gave all of them her best stink eye.

“Listen stooges, can you maybe come up with a list of caterers that would be willing to do this event while I’m downstairs?”

Claire nearly laughed, shaking her head, “Um, no, because I’m coming back down there to watch you flirt with this motherfucker. Wait, I mean watch the lobby, of course.” She grinned that big, beautiful grin at Nat and wriggled her brows.

“Okay, I gotta get a look at this guy,” Jessica said with a grunt of effort, uncurling her long legs to stand while Jane scurried from her seat, tossing her magazine aside with a ‘me too’.

“Well I guess I gotta go look at him too,” Scott started, “I appreciate male beauty too, y’know.”

“Clearly not since you haven’t asked me out once,” Luke shot back dryly.

“This is like having children,” Natasha muttered, turning to Claire briefly, “Lock them all up here, I don’t wanna see one of you down that staircase until he’s gone.”

Though several quips and rebuttals came her way, Natasha finally pulled away enough to make her way down the steps carefully – _let’s not trip in front of the gorgeous ex at the front of your own store_ – and found College Boyfriend/Current Lawyer Matt Murdock smiling near the front desk, both hands closed over the top of his cane.

Natasha was sure she heard a faint “oh shit, he’s _blind!_?” behind her that sounded a lot like Scott. She could also practically hear the withering glare Jessica, Jane and Claire leveled at him without so much as having to look for it.

“Nice establishment you’ve got here,” Matt gave that wry smirk of his, “I mean, from what I can tell.”

“There’s a lot of white interior and natural light, if that helps,” Natasha offered, wanting to pick up the documents he’d lain on the glass counter but wary of seeming antiseptic.

“I can tell,” he gestured lightly around with one finger. Natasha knew Matt still retained enough vision to get a sensibility of light in a space but not enough for distinguishing features. She’d never been more than a reddish silhouette to him visually, though he had insisted he knew every angle of her body, every curve and dip of her face from touch alone. It had been terribly intoxicating at the time.

Clearing his throat – the only giveaway of slight nervousness or discomfort – Matt raised his eyebrows and tilted his head, that patented harmless look he always did like to cop. “So if I ask nicely, can I get a guided tour?”

Relief melted into Natasha’s posture as she laughed, glad to be free of any potential weirdness as she took a quick glance around the store, “You sure? I mean, I can take you wall to wall and describe sex toys to you in great detail, especially the really weird ones.”

“Oh, I came here for the really weird ones,” Matt offered back with a grin, “I like pushing my comfort zone. But you knew that already.”

Natasha bit back the remark in the chamber and smirked instead, shaking her head, “You haven’t changed much, you know that?”

“I never do. Now let’s see what you got, Romanov.”

~~~

Jessica’s legs swung absently as she sat on the tailgate of her beat up little pick-up truck, watching Natasha lock the front door and begin the walk towards her own Prius (thanks, Tony).

“You heading home?” she asked in that way that was clearly fishing, smirking as she rooted around a bag of almonds, “Hot date tonight? With an attorney perhaps?”

Natasha scoffed and cut her eyes over at Jessica, double-clicking the keyless fob to toss her purse inside, “Didn’t I get enough shit from all of you after he left?”

Shrugging her slouchy shoulders, Jessica’s devil-may-care affectation was hardly changed though she was certainly watching Natasha a little closer than usual. “I’m just sayin’, there was palpable chemistry in the room.”

“Old friends,” Natasha corrected vaguely, a hint of irritation coming in a quiet wave that made her consider snapping at Jessica about appropriate boss-employee boundaries. No. That was the last thing she wanted and the last relationship she wanted to have with anyone who was under her, a clear cut reminder that they were on two different tiers of power. Nobody needed to be reminded of that, least of ways that pointedly.

“Well, if it makes you feel better,” Jessica grunted as she stood up to slam the tailgate shut, “I was asking because Claire’s off tonight and we were gonna go grab drinks with Jane if you wanna come.”

Natasha considered for a moment, keys in hand despite the fact that this weird fucking car started with the press of a button. Old habits, even if she didn’t drive in New York. The irritation had subsided as quick as it came and she knew without having to think too hard about it that _the_ raw wound, the big one, was getting sensitive to poking. The insinuation of sleeping with an ex – sleeping with anybody, actually – would be acceptance that the game with Clint had been fully lost and it was time to move onto the next thing. Talking to a friend about it was a tempting offer but there was still the deeply set trench between her life in New York and her life in California, and even just saying Clint’s name here felt like dragging a corpse from one side to the other. Jessica didn’t know that story. Natasha didn’t want to tell it, not again.

Still, her face softened as she looked across at Jessica, her stark paleness almost comforting here.

“Wish I could,” Natasha only half-lied, “I do have kind of a date, just not with that guy.”

“Ah,” Jessica nodded, typically shrewd, “Skype date then, got it. I know the struggle.”

“Yeah,” Natasha looked down at the key fob in her hand, her painted nails, and remembered Wanda’s fingers. OPI, Lincoln Park After Dark. Goddammit, she missed her so much.

“Well, should the need to get out of your apartment one of these nights arise, it’s a standing invitation, boss,” Jessica cracked open the door with an awful metallic squeal and climbed in, “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Jess,” Natasha responded on reflex, fighting the rise of melancholy. She really did want to go out with them, get a little drunk, maybe tell them the story one night way off in the future when she’d been plied with enough drinks. Make real friends here, even if they were her subordinates. Have a social life. Distract herself from thinking about Matt, and distract herself from distracting herself from thinking about Clint by thinking about Matt. Maybe actually have fun.

But she really did have a Skype date with Wanda and a pint of blood-orange sorbet in the freezer. Maria was right in the long run but the Hitachi wouldn’t burn the apartment down tonight.

Maybe if she tried extra hard, she could even manage to not masturbate to memories of Matt in his college apartment, knees in the carpet as he made her come harder than anyone before him ever had.

Maybe if she tried even harder than that, she wouldn’t cry when she remembered that Clint had been the next to.

 

 

 

 


	4. A Vag In The Hand Is Worth Two In The Bush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The first time Natasha set sights on him he was standing near the caterer, smiling amicably all the way up to the eyes. It would have been impossible not to check him out in any circumstance – crowded street, train station, public bathroom, whatever – and she didn’t have the composure to correct her stare for a few long seconds as she involuntarily put one foot in front of the other to carry over to the table without a thought as to what she was going to say. He easily cleared six foot two, shoulders so broad over a waist so cut that he hardly seemed real. As she got close enough to hear the conversation, the man laughed and tossed his head back without an ounce of reserve. He sounded like goddamn bells._
> 
> The event at The Crimson comes together in this long, jam-packed chapter, and two fan favorites I've been teasing since Salacious pt 1 finally make their awaited appearance with smutty, graphic results.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, enjoy a chapter nearly double the standard size as payment for being patient with my 5 month absence. 
> 
> Also enjoy some descriptive-ass smut. Finally, right? 
> 
> xo  
> Noccalula  
> noccalula-writes.tumblr.com

“Let’s move this last row a little more to the right, keep it more perpendicular with the main display?”

Tony wandered through the maze of circular tables dispersed around platform stages, undoing his cuff buttons and beginning to roll up his sleeves. Typically he wasn’t above giving orders to watch others carry out but the next night needed to be immaculate, the perfect debut for the west coast branch. New York loved a dive aesthetic, gritty and real and imperfect, but this was Santa Monica and if Tony knew nothing else, he knew that California appreciated perfection. Grabbing the edge of a round table as the set up staff joined him, he tossed a glance over his shoulder to place Natasha.

“Nat, need your eye for a second, please.”

Looking up from the e-reader loaded with pictures of the finished versions of every hors d'oeuvres on the agreed-upon menu, Natasha darted over to help with the last table, though it was hardly a necessity with so many muscle-bound movers on the case. Still, she grunted along with the rest as they moved the six-seater tables (solid wood, heavy as fuck) just a skootch to the right until the lineup felt more balanced with the large display and platform rigged at the front of the room. The plan was to use said display for any emcee’ing (to be kept to a minimum, per Natasha’s request as there was nothing more obnoxious than an event where someone talked into a microphone the entire goddamn night) and several of the fetish models, who would also be oscillating around the separate, smaller platforms throughout the night. Men, women, non gender conforming people, models with visible disabilities, fat models had all been hired on Natasha’s insistence and much to her pleasant surprise, there was no push back from The Crimson. Apparently social awareness was becoming as normal a practice in Santa Monica as it had been in New York when she left, or so she hoped.

Several of the models had come in to see the space and finalize payment with Natasha – nobody got checks until after the event, obviously, but most of them wanted to be sure the deal had been sealed. Most of them had responded to the ad with little to no experience, which was just fine by Salacious, but a few were coming in from an agency that represented fetish models across the state. Of the three such specimens, one of them made an early appearance as the tables were finalized in their line and Tony wandered off to antagonize the in house bartender about gin brands. An impressively tall and cut figure strode over to the side table and immediately caught the corner of Natasha’s eye.

The first time Natasha set sights on him he was standing near the caterer, smiling amicably all the way up to the eyes. It would have been impossible not to check him out in any circumstance – crowded street, train station, public bathroom, whatever – and she didn’t have the composure to correct her stare for a few long seconds as she involuntarily put one foot in front of the other to carry over to the table without a thought as to what she was going to say. He easily cleared six foot two, shoulders so broad over a waist so cut that he hardly seemed real. As she got close enough to hear the conversation, the man laughed and tossed his head back without an ounce of reserve. He sounded like goddamn bells.

“Model?” was all Natasha could muster as she quickly took stock of just how messy her hair probably was, keeping her ever-cool countenance despite the doubts.

He turned to face her, cutting cornflower blue eyes beneath long golden lashes her way as he smiled warmly.

“You Natasha?”

I am whatever name you want to call me, dude. “Yeah, Natasha Romanov, did we speak on the phone?”

They did not speak on the phone. She’d remember that clean, confident voice. She’d have masturbated to that voice. Wait, was that accent…?

“Nah, email,” he stuck one big hand out at her and smiled like he belonged on a billboard, teeth like Arlington cemetery, “I’m Steve.”

“Steve!” recognition hit Natasha quickly and she was grateful for the recall, anything to avoid stumbling over awkward silence while her gears turned quickly, “There’s two of you, right?”

“My husband,” Steve thumbed at the door despite that no one was there, “He’ll be here tomorrow night, I was just coming to fill out the direct deposit form. Can’t do cash, we have to take taxes out, y’know. Red tape.”

“Of course. We’re running a business here, I can sympathize with the obnoxious red tape.”

Heteronormativity conditioned Natasha (and pretty much all women who liked men in some capacity or another) to be disappointed at the word “husband”, but… was she crazy or was he flirting? She’d known plenty of male/male couples who dabbled with women, though she’d never participated in one. Maybe he was gay but flirty; maybe he was bi or pan and happily monogamous, and maybe he was bi or pan and scouting. Who knew. Either way, game on.

“Well, we’re glad you were hiring so close to home base,” Steve offered with that smile that might have rung reminiscent of a gum commercial if he didn’t come across as authentic from first blush, “It’ll be nice to not have to travel for work.”

His jaw was lantern perfection and shaved smooth, his hair sandy blonde. Forget fetish modeling – this guy could have been a mainstream model if he’d been inclined. As a matter of fact, he was alarmingly close to the kind of prefab handsome that turned Natasha off more than anything else. Maybe he would have been on the wrong side of that line if there wasn’t the slightest bump at the top of his nose or a warmth in his blue eyes, crinkling at the sides when he smiled. He didn’t seem false, even if he didn’t look quite real. Though the thought was pushed away quickly, she briefly thought of Clint and his patented ‘alarmingly disarming’ demeanor.

Fortunately, looking at Steve was short-circuiting her ability to fret at the moment.

Behind him Tony lurked in the hallway to the kitchen, wide eyed as he stared at the back of Steve’s head. A small flail of his hands got Natasha’s attention briefly enough that he could gesture at the man’s physique with upturned palms and an agonized face of “whyyyyyy!?”

Natasha smirked but looked back up at Steve, who hadn’t missed a beat but had clearly taken the moment of distraction to scan her head to toe. His eyes widened when he realized he’d been caught, clearing his throat and laughing softly as the faintest blush crept up his cheeks. Why on earth would a fucking fetish model of all people blush at anything? Natasha was utterly charmed. Furthermore, she was utterly wet – an acute awareness and vague alarm at how suddenly it had happened.

This was a pleasant change from how increasingly unresponsive her vagina had become in the last few months. She’d even considered faking an orgasm on cam for Maria solely to spare her any ego damage when Natasha knew full well the problem was between her ears, not her legs.

“Well,” Natasha picked up but a few awkward seconds late, clearing her own throat, “The forms are on the table, you can grab however many you need, it takes twenty four hours to clear so if you both need to be paid tomorrow night, I’d do them today.”

Steve gestured with the papers, already in his too-perfect hands, “Yeah, got ‘em.”

Typically, Natasha prided herself on her ability to smoothly navigate a conversation, especially a flirtatious one. In this case, neither of them had a good repartee for another solid two seconds, mutual silence hanging thick as they looked at each other, considered looking away, and finally both broke into nervous laughter.

“Oh man,” Steve managed, raking a hand back over his hair, “Has my game always been this shitty and I’m just now realizing it, or do you just short-circuit guys all the time?”

Behind him, Tony – eavesdropping as casually as possible – pretended to grab the edge of the table and violently bang it against the floor while screaming. Natasha grinned wide, eyebrow crooking as she felt herself finally regain some of her footing. Clear cut interest was there, open-faced admission of attraction. This, she could work with. Like riding a bike.

Like riding what she hoped was a really, really big bike.

Gargantuan bike. Just the biggest bike she’d ever seen.

“I can’t say I’ve been accused of short-circuiting before but I’m flattered to add technical espionage to my list of skills,” she recovered smoothly, marveling at herself. Good line, Romanov.

Steve raised those disgustingly nice eyebrows and laughed. “Well, you own a sex shop, you’re an event coordinator and an office manager, and now you’re a technical saboteur,” he paused, taking a much more daring glance up and down, voice lowering, “Anything you just _can’t_ do?”

_Jesus_. This guy wasn’t kidding about having game. Natasha bit the inside of her lip but stared back, starting to feel like her old, not easily intimidated self again. Starting to feel like her incredibly horny self again, for that matter.

Natasha opened her mouth to response with something like “For you? Nothing” as a crystal centerpiece shattered to the floor far across the reception hall. Tony nearly came out of his skin, jumping a solid inch off the ground and taking the opportunity to excuse himself, finger up as he headed down the hallway, “Oh, _that_ sounded expensive, that had better not have been that goddamn goose-thing!” (It was the goddamn goose thing).

Steve watched after Tony for a long moment before turning back to Natasha, not quite able to look her in the eyes for long again but chancing a glance back. “Well, that was kismet in action if I’ve ever seen it. See you tomorrow night?”

“If you wanna get paid,” Natasha offered back, happy to let the insinuation hang in the air as he backed up a few steps, smiling and reluctantly breaking eye contact to turn and head back towards the sunshine of the outside world.

“Hey, Natasha?” he turned back, not bothering to conceal a grin, “Where’s that accent from?”

_I KNEW it._  
  
“Brooklyn,” she called back, mirroring his smile, “I knew it!”

“God, yes, home sweet home,” Now less flirtatious than excited, Steve raised his hands in victory, “Well, now you’re perfect.”

Before she could think of anything witty to come back with, he turned on a pivot and jogged casually across the street. She swore his hair glinted when the light hit his head.

“Are you _kidding_ me!?” Tony hissed practically in her ear, having snuck up quite easily given how distracted she still very much was, “Natasha? Natasha!”

“What?” she asked innocuously as Tony grabbed her shoulders and turned her to face him, big dark eyes boring into hers as though he were going to tell her something deadly serious.

“Natasha Alianovna Romanoff…” he began, voice low, “You have to. For science.”

~~~

Natasha held her hair off the back of her neck while Tony quickly zipped her into her tight black cocktail dress, taking a moment to make sure her necklace clasp was closed all the way to avoid hair snaggage. “Donezo.” He rubbed her upper arms affectionately, looking over her shoulder at their reflection in the mirror.

“Well, you look perfect.”

Natasha smiled back genuinely, wanting to turn and find a tie to fix or a collar to smooth but knowing that Tony was fastidious in all ways and there was nothing to improve upon. “Right back atcha, I gotta say, boss. You’re looking very spry these days.”

Tony tapped his crow’s feet before picking up his glasses, “Botox, honey. A little around the eyes, a little around the mouth, and a few in the jaw to keep me from getting migraines when I reflexively grind my teeth out of stress.”

Chuckling, Natasha smacked his shoulder, “No stress tonight, okay? It’s been planned to a tee, just enjoy yourself.”

“I will, I will,” Tony handed over the box of butter soft leather opera gloves, “Y’know, you’d almost look perfectly waspy tonight if we ignore all the fetish touches.”

“Yeah, well, I’d wear latex but I don’t like having to powder myself down to get back out of it later.”

“I mean, Steve’ll probably be peeling it off of you later, so…”

Natasha rolled her eyes but smiled to herself. Steve and his husband were most definitely open if not poly if he had no bones about flirting with her before an event they’d both be working – it cut a good figure for her chances tonight. For this reason and for ambiance, Natasha’d gone out of her way to shave down slick and match her bra and panties, a level of detail she so rarely bothered with. Blessedly, any hesitation about getting laid again seemed to have died the moment she got back to her apartment the night before and masturbated until her hand went numb, coming twice in rapid fire succession and a third time after a quick break. Even if this guy never touched her, the drought was over.

Tony didn’t shut up about Steve right up until the moment they arrived at The Crimson, an hour ahead of expected guest arrivals and as the models were all readying themselves in the staff break room. Claire’s hospital schedule and Scott’s weekend with his daughter prevented them both from attending but the rest of the Salacious staff was trickling in, having sworn to dress up nicely and take plenty of pictures for the two who couldn’t make it. When Natasha and Tony reached the break room, Jessica was already handing out nametags and orders in her tight leather pants and lace-back corset top. Tony refrained from commentary – the west coast staff still seemed a little mystified and maybe intimidated by him, and they hardly understood his sense of humor enough for him to whistle or make (non-aggressive) remarks like he would with Natasha or Wanda – but Natasha did no such thing, wolf-whistling as she stepped around the table to get a look at Jessica from head to toe.

“Hot damn, Jones, look at you. You look like a video game villain.”

“Relax,” Jessica deadpanned back, “The top was twenty bucks at Charlotte Russe, I expect it to disintegrate off by the end of the night.”

Luke said nothing but smiled quietly to himself, raising his eyebrows. It didn’t escape Natasha.

The click-clack of high heels caught their attention as Jane came through the doorway to the bathroom on newborn foal legs, all angles and uncomfortable posture as she teetered atop platform Perspex heels. She was stuffed into a short, black latex dress, every bump of her ribs and hip bones highlighted and her nipples hard against the unfamiliar plastic. Her long hair had been straightened to a fine sheen and her makeup had been applied expertly, but she looked from Jessica to Natasha with abject terror on her face.

“Guys!” she hissed, bending forward, “How in the _fuck_ am I going to go pee in this thing? It’s _stuck_ to me!”

Luke stared in mutual discomfort, “I… you can’t just roll it up?”

“You look like half of Carmen Electra,” Jessica said flatly, eyebrows knit in concern.

“I think she looks like a backup singer for Prince,” Luke countered, arms crossed, “In the early 90’s.”

“Guys,” Natasha scolded, turning to look at Jane again with a furrowed brow, “Did you powder up before you put it on?”

Jane’s eyes went wide as the lightbulb above her head went on, only far too late.

“…you’re supposed to use powder?”

~~~

Natasha glided through the crowd on her reasonably priced leather boots, a genuine riding crop perpetually in one hand for ambiance, to get a temperature read on the room. Her brief speech at the top of the night was blessedly over quickly and smoothly as Natasha happily let Tony handle the bulk of any public speaking; she’d been nervous but not too nervous to pull it off competently. A little distracted by the throng of people and the sea of leather and latex, she had only been able to semi-take stock of the models on the platforms unless they were moved to the front stage for demonstration purposes. Of course she’d seen Steve, exchanged one quick, heavy smile as he walked up in his leather jock strap, a crossbody harness all that covered his immaculate chest and abs. _Jesus_. Really the crowd itself was a little metropolitan for Natasha’s typical tastes, glossy and beautiful and done to the nines as opposed to what the setting might have looked like in Brooklyn, but there appeared to be a large turnout from the LGBTQ community and several people with gender-neutral pronouns on their tags. In fact, Natasha was discussing the finer points of ball gags with one such ze when glancing over zir shoulder, she noticed she was being watched.

The fact that he stood near Steve only highlighted that he was Steve’s inverse: equally beautiful but dark where Steve was light. His brown hair hung shaggy past his jaw, a touch of a five o’clock shadow on a chiseled jaw, and a wash of black eye makeup haloing his piercing eyes in a sooty, fine shadow. He was shirtless, a smattering of dark hair across his chest where Steve had been waxed bare, tight leather pants and a black leather collar with a d-ring. It took a moment for her to notice – god knows his eyes were holding her captive for a few good seconds before she could give a good full body scan – that he had no left arm, only a partial stump past the shoulder. There had been specificity on the form from the agency that one of their models was visibly disabled and considerations needed to be made for that but none had been listed.

That thousand yard stare was fixed on her, his mouth a set line with only the slightest curl at one side, and she knew this was not someone who was going to make subtle jokes and blush. He was watching her like he knew something, like he could sense the thrumming between her legs as she stared back, unwilling to concede the challenge.

Well, that had to be him. The husband.

“Excuse me,” Natasha muttered almost as an afterthought – something she’d kick herself for later, this was a business affair after all – but the person to whom she’d been speaking had already set zir sights on Luke in his sharp burgundy suit.

The stranger tilted his head only slightly, an invitation to come closer, and leaned back against the stage he’d apparently hopped down from while Lady blasted from the speakers (pussy good, pussy sweet, pussy good enough to eat – _you’re the best, Lady_ ). Cocky. Arrogant. Deliciously so. Whether it was a costume or not – bad, bratty subs were definitely a thing, Natasha was well aware – he was wearing the hell out of it.

Natasha felt her head tilt contrary to his, mirroring him as she slowed her approach.

“You Brooklyn?”

She smirked. “You must be Steve’s better half.”

He laughed, wind over metal grating that passed as quickly as it came, and returned the smirk.

“Yeah, he’d agree with you. I’m Bucky.”

“Bucky?” Natasha couldn’t help herself, this one seemed to want cat and mouse and it’d been far too long without any witty banter, “Wasn’t that the dog on The Little Rascals?”

Bucky gave a hiss of a laugh again, too casual-cool for anything committal, and shook his head, “I’m a hundred percent sure that was Petey but alright.”

Steve appeared out of thin air, pressing in closer than he might’ve elsewhere but the crowd giving a perfect excuse. Natasha had no complaints the moment she realized who was now in her immediate space, turning to face him a little as well with a neutral, cool expression.

“Buck, you playing nice?”

Bucky turned to raise his eyebrows at Natasha almost conspiratorily then looked back to Steve, Cheshire grin burgeoning off what had been a pretty well-held pout until then. “What do I get if I say I was?”

Steve gave him a look that spoke volumes, somewhere between “you’re gonna get it later” and “don’t be a smartass”. They had the immediate ease of a couple that had been together for a long time, Natasha surmised quickly, and it was abundantly clear that this wasn’t just a situation where Steve was free to roam when the urge struck.

She was very clearly being scouted by both of them.

Shifting her weight one foot to another, she was acutely aware that she was wet again.

“You satisfied with the performance so far, Brooklyn?” Bucky asked, not so much thinly veiled as completely unveiled.

“Natasha,” she offered back and stroked the riding crop across her palm idly, another subtle move of the pawn, “Well, you’ll get paid if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“That’s not at all what I’m asking you,” Bucky responded, eyes set hard on her.

“Natasha.” A pale, thin hand wrapped around Natasha’s arm and Jessica came suddenly into the picture, interjecting herself without an ounce of concern for the models’ precious conversation, “You’re needed at the bar.”

Surprised and more than a little annoyed, Nat turned to look at Steve, who simply smiled in response. “Don’t worry, red, we’ll find you when it’s over.”

Natasha hated being called “red”, but tumbling off of Steve’s tongue it didn’t seem so awful.

Though her heels slowed her down just a little, Natasha kept as close of pace with Jessica as she could until they were at the bar, alarm beginning to prick through the cloud of arousal that had lowered over her. What in the hell could possibly be wrong?

“What, what is it?”

Jessica moved to the opposite side of the bar, just out of the bartender’s way as most of the guests had elected to mingle at their tables or on the floor. Raising her eyebrows, she paused for a moment before starting again, fishing out two cocktail glasses.

“Oh, right. Nothing. You were just clearly getting cruised by two dudes and I wanted to give you an easy out in case you needed a breather.”

Natasha crooked a brow at Jessica. “Jesus, you really are a detective, aren’t you?”

“Not til I get my PI license but yeah, I tend to notice shit,” Jessica responded casually, fishing out a bottle of Sapphire Bombay gin and pouring out two, “But yeah, nothing’s wrong. I mean, Jane is drunk and due to start making overtures at women any minute now but other than that I just wanted to do a welfare check.”

The gesture, however unwarranted in this situation, warmed Natasha’s heart a little. It was the sort of thing she frequently did for her friends. God knows an easy out of a conversation still felt a little dishonest but it sure beat the shit out of fearing for her safety in case the talker was one of the vast number of men who didn’t take rejection well. Despite this reaffirming gesture, Natasha was reminded that she’d been meaning to have a conversation like this one with Jessica for some time – Jane’s (as of yet unconfirmed) bi-curiosity was not up for grabs and jokes.

“Yeah, could you guys maybe lay off her a bit with that?” Natasha took the glass, watching Jessica’s expression completely fail to change despite the gentle admonishing, “I mean, even if it _is_ true, you think pointing it out all the time is going to make her come out of the closet?”

“Maybe not,” Jessica conceded, coming to rest her elbows on the edge of the counter, “But her super big boyfriend probably will. I hope, anyway. That’s a shitty place to stay stuck.”

When Jessica’s eyes cut across the room, Natasha followed her gaze to where Jane was laughing with a bevy of admirers, her nametag askew and her makeup beginning to run just slightly.

“I can’t believe she got drunk at a work event.”

Jessica snorted. “Right? Rookie move.”

Natasha gazed wistfully a moment longer, “I wonder if she ever got to pee. She’s going to have a rash when she tries to peel that dress off.”

Jessica gave a lingering look and shook her head, knocking back the rest of her gin so quickly that Natasha barely registered she was already done. “Well, however you spin it, you’re free to go back to setting up your spit-roast. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t being hounded.”

Natasha couldn’t help but smirk back at her, “Does it seem like I’m not capable of telling men I’m not interested in ‘no’?”

Shrugging her bare white shoulders, Jessica picked up the rest of the bottle to pour herself another as though it was nothing. Figures Jessica would be able to put away liquor like no one’s business despite being skinny as hell.

“No,” she screwed the cap back on and clunked the bottle back onto the bar, “But I know a lot of men don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”

“Natasha!” Jane came out of nowhere, clambering up onto the elegant little barstool with surprising dexterity, like watching a mountain goat scale a cliff face with stilettos on. “Natasha, I’ve got to talk to you, I’ve been looking for you! Oh my god, I’m a little drunk, I’m so sorr- wait, are you gonna fire me?!”

Jane’s expression had morphed from wide-eyed excitement at something very, very important to apologetic to suddenly frightened, one hand shooting out to brace against Natasha’s shoulder. Jessica raised both eyebrows but said nothing, sipping her gin slowly and trying to stay as still and quiet as possible – maybe if Jane didn’t notice she was there, she could be a fly on the wall for whatever overexcited drunk talk was coming. Natasha cut a near glare over at her – help me out here – but turned her attention quickly back to Jane when her concerns took a sharp turn.

“What? No, I’m not going to fire you, Jane.”

“Because I know how unprofessional this is an-“

“You’re sweating in a latex dress and you probably didn’t eat before this because you were nervous. I’m willing to bet you only had like two drinks, trying to keep up with Jessica with no intention of tying one on. Besides, event’s almost over. Just do me a favor and get home safely.”

“I’ll share a cab with her,” Jessica interjected, pouring some Pellegrino fizzy water into a champagne flute and sticking it in front of the drunk person in question.

“Thank you.” Natasha quickly moved her attention back to Drunken Jane. “You were saying?”

“I just, I wanted t- … can we talk in private?” Jane made uncomfortably long, wide eye contact, “I mean just for a second, I know you’re really busy and really important an-“

Getting the sensation that getting to a point would require a lot of interrupting her, Natasha got back up on her feet (aching from the heeled boots but not horribly so, at least not yet) and gestured back at the staff room. No sooner had they made it in and shut the door than Jane whirled back around to Natasha, all run-on sentences and nervous fast talking.

“Look, everything they say about me, all the shit Jessica’s always saying? It’s true, it’s totally true, I really like girls – or at least I mean I like looking at girls, I like, like, _thinking_ about girls anyway, and my boyfriend Thor-“

“You can just call him Thor, I know he’s your boyfriend.”

“My boyfriend Thor is TOTALLY okay with this, like I’ve told him, we talk about it when we’re..y’know, having sex and all, and he wants me to experiment without him and see how I feel about it all-“

Natasha had a vague sense of where this was going.

“And like, I want to have sex with a girl. Well, a woman, but I want it to be someone I know and I’m really attracted to and I spent a lot of time thinking about this and deciding who would be perfect and I’ve got it narrowed down,” Jane finally paused to suck in a breath, shifting her seltzer to the other hand and summoning courage. _Oh no_. “And I think it should be you.”

“Jane…”

“Hear me out, I just –“

Natasha tuned out briefly while she watched Jane’s wide eyed rambling, her emphatic gesturing. It wasn’t that Jane was unattractive by any stretch – god knows she had one of those pretty, delicate faces and was almost kind of titillating in her latex dress. Natasha had noticed immediately that she was beautiful when all she did was wear ethically-sourced hemp clothing and Patagonia shoes. It wasn’t a lack of potential for attraction at all, though Natasha had been careful not to ruminate long enough to cultivate any for her employees because, well, _employees_. The power balance between herself and Wanda had been less pronounced and even that had felt marginally uncomfortable; her attraction to Wanda physically had weathered down beneath the emotional responsibility of their friendship. She briefly thought about the last time she’d been acutely aware of it, the urge to kiss her burgundy lips as they sat on the back stoop of the Brownsville store. Complicated was a good word. She didn’t tug hard on that thread anymore; best to let it lie.

“-and you’ve very beautiful and I’m very attracted to both your body and your mind, you have a very powerful way of carrying yourself and I think that’s _so_ admirable and sexy and I just-“

“Jane,” Natasha finally reached out and took her slender shoulders, bending just enough to look her right in the eye, “I want you to listen to me, okay? You’re probably not going to remember everything I say tonight but I want you to remember at least this: it’s okay for us to talk about this later, when you’re not drunk, if you need to hear it again. But I cannot sleep with you, however flattering that offer may be, because you are my employee.”

She felt Jane’s shoulders sag beneath the weight of defeat as she sighed, long hair beginning to grow frizzy and errant.

“I just don’t want you to think it’s because you aren’t attractive. You’re beautiful. And sexy. And there will be a girl out there who desperately wants to-“

Jane put up her hands, trying to wrangle away as peacefully as possible as she broke eye contact, “No, no, I get it, I’m so sorry, forget I said anything.”

“Jane –“

“No, I’m sorry, I’m gonna get back to work.” She pulled the handle and stumbled back out into the venue, flustered and visibly embarrassed, as Natasha sighed heavily.

She nearly jumped when she glanced over and saw Luke staring at the space where the exchange had taken place, eyes wide and one hand over his chin as if he were off in thought. He cut his gaze over at Natasha and said nothing for a long moment before shrugging, gesturing with one hand.

“I mean, I know a girl who would.”

~~~

When they asked her to come home with them, she said yes without hesitation.

Tony, in his best dom-esque suit and sharp tie, had practically pushed her out the door with both hands when she’d asked if she needed to stay to direct cleanup. They’d hired a crew for both this and set up to reduce the amount of work on the actual employees, but Natasha felt an obligation to stick around and see the job done despite how badly her aching cunt was begging her to go take up two gorgeous fetish models on their offer to, verbatim per Bucky, “take you home and fucking worship you.” It didn’t take a genius to see the way both of these men had been looking at Natasha nor how she was enjoying it, and Jessica gave her a quick salute of appreciation on the way out the door.

“Godspeed, Romanoff,” she chuckled, Natasha covering her mouth to keep from laughing or looking too embarrassed. Bucky laughed anyway.

There was no preamble, no awkward cab conversation, no stumbling around the moments before the whole thing goes down. The second they were on the sidewalk, Bucky had his hand snaked around to her lower back, pulling her up against him in a surprisingly graceful backwards walk. Clearly this was a man with decent balance. His lips were against her neck, stubble lighting up her skin and sending every blast of sensation straight between her legs. He smelled amazing, like just enough cologne and a little bit of leather. Perfection.

“Save some for when we get home, Buck,” Steve cautioned, one hand coming to brush along Natasha’s shoulders, sweep the ends of her just-long-enough hair off them.

The dance up the stairs was a jumble of hands, big palms across smooth shoulders, the grab against the fabric of her dress. Twining, twisting of three bodies in a narrow space. Then they were inside of an apartment that by all accounts seemed very metropolitan and well decorated in the half-light, someone turning on a lamp so they could cleanly make their way into a bedroom with four tall posts. Warm wood furniture, dark curtains, sandalwood candles – clean, decisive, comforting. The details blurred more into feelings than visuals as she was swept inside in a flurry of deep kisses from both of them, soft tongues against the hollow of her throat, hands everywhere.

She did not think of Clint save the quick notation that this felt nothing like Clint and Phil. With them, Phil was the center of attention, the new interloper coming to experiment, the one whose feelings had to be carefully monitored and considered lest he hit a limit he didn’t know he had. She and Clint had pivoted on the axis of Phil when the three of them fucked, his decisive presence the stem of the whole scenario.

These two men – these gorgeous, big men, easily over six feet each and broad, strong – were focused almost entirely on her. If not for the gentle caress of Steve’s hand over Bucky’s stomach as they began pulling away their clothing, all BDSM gear long gone in lieu of comfortable clothes to walk home in, she might have forgotten they were lovers inviting her into their bedroom and not just two men with a hankering for the same woman.

Lips flushed with the taste of Steve – wintergreen gum and the scent of expensive but simple aftershave – Natasha stepped back against the high footboard of the bed to watch the two of them peel away layers of cotton, denim. Bucky grinned that roguish grin at her as he pulled off his shirt effortlessly, the missing arm hardly a hindrance, and she gave a hint of a return on her open lips. Beside him, tanned and disgustingly cut, Steve dropped everything but his gray boxer briefs, body like he was carved from marble. This was too good to be true. Too good.

“God…” she purred in a near whisper, watching the both of them move in on her in their gray and black respective underwear, two sets of smoldering stares on her.

“May we undress you?”

Steve’s gentle question sent chills up her spine as she nodded dumbly, starting to attempt to toe out of boots that clearly needed unzipping first when Bucky shook his head, grabbing her thigh and squeezing. “No, leave those on.” His attention turned to the butter soft leather of her elbow-length gloves and he locked eyes with her as he leaned in to delicately suck the tip of one of her fingers into the pink of his mouth. “And these, too.”

Natasha’s knees goddamn near buckled.

They unzipped and peeled away her dress with careful consideration, and she felt like a goddess, like a monument to be worshipped when they both simultaneously sighed and groaned at the sight of her. Natasha knew she was attractive, conventionally at that, but these two didn’t even seem real and here they were, practically salivating at the sight of her in Agent Provocateur. Pupils blown, mouths slack, they both pawed at her reverently, slowly, as she listened to the aphrodisiac of their breaths coming ever so slightly harder.

“Jesus,” Bucky said, and it was almost holy, “She’s _perfect_.”

“I told you,” Steve murmured warmly against her shoulder, her neck as he sucked soft red patches into her skin.

They were both visibly hard through the thin fabric of their boxer briefs, and as blessed here as they had been genetically everywhere else. The bastards. Fighting through the haze of being too overwhelmed by their attentions to strike back, Natasha reached down and grabbed them both with her leather-clad hands, an odd sensation that prevented her from getting an accurate feel of them but was beyond exciting for reasons unknown. The barrier. The foreign but familiar feeling. Both of them groaned rough, hard and pressing involuntarily into her palms.

“Shit,” Bucky hissed through his teeth, cutting his smudged, kohl-rimmed eyes over at Steve in some sort of conspiratorial play. The other man wasn’t looking, his eyes traveling the length of Natasha’s body as he fingered at the soft lace of her panties, the cups of her bra. Slipping the fabric down gently, mindfully, he dipped down and caught her achingly hard nipple in his mouth.

Standing was cumbersome now between the heels and the urge to lay down and just be ravished already. As much as she was devouring all this delicious foreplay, she was ready to go five minutes ago but the two of them seemed so patient in stark contrast, still stroking slow hands up her thighs, across her stomach until Steve finally slipped his hand between her legs to press the soaked fabric of her panties against her throbbing cunt with a sharp hiss.

The cry that tore out of her throat felt raw, strange. It hadn’t been that long since she’d been touched by anyone, had it? Knowing the answer would probably upset her, Natasha left that string unpulled, attention blissfully consumed by Steve’s slow, meticulous strokes against the bump of her clit through the slick wet fabric.

Stars in her eyes, Natasha fluttered them open to look over at Steve, take in the sharpness of his cheekbones, the beauty of his golden lashes on his hooded eyes. “What’s taking you so long?” Her voice was coy but rough, desperation belying any tease she might have hoped to provide.

Steve didn’t answer, only smirked at her warmly before taking her wrist with careful insistence to move it off his erection and slid to his knees in the plush carpet.

Before she could register a reaction of her own, she felt Bucky gently close his hand around her other wrist, bringing both her gloved hands together and catching them easily in his own. Natasha looked up into that smug grin, those fierce eyes, panting softly as he guided her hands to the post, Steve gently turning her hips in his hands.

“Grab the post.”

Natasha did as he asked, closing her weak-feeling fingers around the wood and watching as he moved behind her and went to his knees while Steve slipped her panties down, pressed soft kisses above the bare skin of her pussy as it was revealed to him. Craning her neck, she watched and stepped out of them as he slipped them past her boots, her lower lip caught hard between her teeth. Breath caught in her throat somewhere behind a moan, she shivered as Steve slipped two fingers over her slick wet lips, not even having to open her to get them slippery, and reached between her legs to press them into Bucky’s waiting mouth. Bucky’s eyes burned up at her as he sucked the taste of her pussy off Steve’s fingers with a rough groan, palming himself.

_Put this moment on my headstone_.

Steve took her leg just under the plush of her thigh and raised it, a command she followed nearly reflexively, until he placed the heeled boot on the edge of a ridge on the bedframe. He only watched a moment longer to make sure she had a good grip on her footing, that she seemed comfortable before his attention was locked back on her cunt, now spread before him, as Bucky grabbed and squeezed her ass with a jagged moan. Natasha’s brain lit up with short-circuit levels of pleasure, fingers gripping tight on the post and now sweating inside her gloves. Steve looked up at her and smiled. She could only smile back in blown-pupiled disbelief at her own good fortune.

“Don’t let go.”

A moan tore out of her, stammered like a stuttering clutch in a shitty car as they both moved in and began eating her from either side. Steve’s concise, warm mouth and tongue glided along the nearly dripping length of her impossibly wet slit to suckle at her clit while Bucky buried his face in her ass, lapping at her.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” she exhaled, core trembling. Male-male-female threesomes were not new to her. This was. It was too much to process, too much to find an analogy for, only nerves firing into synapses and the exquisiteness of soft tongues delving into wetness, slicking her front to back. Time could have stopped at that very moment and Natasha would have been more than fine with it.

Maybe it did. Who knew how long it went on. It felt like forever, blessed perfect forever like swimming in warm water, every inch of her skin engaged. Steve’s hands roamed up her thighs to hold her hips, Bucky’s caressing her lower back as they both kept her to their mouths like she was the fullest glass tipping over. The sounds were obscene, the slick of Steve sucking at her lips while Bucky slipped a few fingers along, grazing her opening, spreading more of her wetness back to her ass, further lubricating his ministrations. It was too much – quickly it became too much – and suddenly Natasha was pitching forward, squeezing the post to fight the involuntary urge to grab Steve’s hair as he sucked at her clit with methodical, soft tongue.

“ _Fuck_ ,” she rasped, breathless, “Fuck! I-…”

Both of them kept the steady clip, no one giving an inch as her hips jerked, spasmed against Steve’s face and then back into Bucky’s, moving with their own mind while she gripped the post so hard her knuckles were white inside the gloves. They held her fixed between them, giving no quarter, no mercy in the onslaught of her orgasm as it wracked her until she was shaking, panting, crying out with an abandon she hadn’t felt in a very long time. Her legs felt like jelly, the knee holding up most of her weight going weak enough that she worried she might fall until she felt Steve’s arms, Bucky’s arm come up to grip around her and hold her up. Steve broke away to pant, mouth glistening as he stared up at her with a ferocity she hadn’t seen before in his calm but confident demeanor.

Steve shifted away, rising to take Natasha by the waist and ease her towards the bed, letting her other foot down. Despite the changing position Bucky hadn’t stopped, his tongue still steady and insistent against her sensitive asshole; he finally paused to let Steve bend her over at the waist so that she could rest on the mattress, get some weight off her feet. Moaning, Bucky spread her legs and took the finally proffered opportunity to taste her at the source, his groans reverberating into the throbbing, sensitive lips. Natasha purred out a moan of satisfaction, the lapping of Bucky’s tongue almost soothing as long as he kept off her thrumming, overstimulated clit, the idea of his need to taste her for his own purposes stiffening her nipples even harder against the soft duvet fabric.

Steve slid a hand softly up her back to undo her bra and slip the straps down her shoulders, coming to press warm, slow kisses along her shoulder blades and up the back of her neck. The degree of attention really was the worshipping that Bucky had promised – this was a lot like being at the spa, if it were the kind of spa porn always suggested, anyway.

The low rumble of Steve’s voice in her ear sent a fresh gush of wetness straight to Bucky’s mouth, making him groan-chuckle and delve in that much more greedily.

“Can you take us both at once, or would you like one at a time?” he tugged at the lobe with his teeth, ever mindful, “Your choice.”

“ _Choice_ ,” she exhaled, breathlessly laughing and still only able to communicate in short bursts, “Impossible…want it all.”

Steve laughed back, a warm joke shared between the three of them, all that odd comfort from intimacy with men who were near total strangers but treated her like royalty.

“Me too,” he murmured, sucking what would surely be a soft bruise into her shoulder, “But if you want both of us, Bucky needs to know so he can get you ready.”

Natasha barely had the brainpower to mull longer than a few seconds, nodding. Double-penetration had been done before, though it was a little more daunting with two cocks this big. Phil was solidly average, Clint only slightly above so, and it had been one of Phil’s early favorites to put Natasha on top to ride him while Clint climbed behind to fuck her ass. It was good. The Steve and Bucky eating-rimming tandem was definitely the new number one, but it was good.

She didn’t hear whatever Steve had said to Bucky specifically, only that it was clearly a warm affirmative. His hand came up to squeeze and knead at the softness of her ass, her hip as he chanced a few soft licks at her clit. She sighed and squirmed restlessly, flattening her hands against the fabric only to knot it in them. Once she felt the fire being slowly stoked back to life, he switched his focus back to her ass and slowed down significantly. Steve had moved out of view but she could hear him moving around the room, opening a drawer, presumably retrieving lube. She was used to being rimmed in preparation for anal but not quite so slowly, so thoroughly; Bucky took his time until he was no longer only stimulating the sensitive nerves but opening her ever so slightly without fingers. The pad of his thumb softly smoothed over her slick clit until she was whimpering again, yielding until he was able to work his tongue into her ass.

Gasping, her eyes fluttered as she felt the bed give under Steve’s knees.

“I know,” he said warmly, raking his hand through her hair to knot it up in his big fingers with care, “He’s amazing, isn’t he? Just let him work, he loves this.”

And love it he apparently did, judging by his moans, his tenacity. He’d buried his face in the softness of her flesh, jaw meeting the resistant of her pubic bone, working at her until it was another blur of changing positions in the warm partial light.

They were naked now, almost comically impressive erections bobbing heavy as the two moved back to bookend Natasha on the bed. She imagined how silky and hot they would have felt in her hands but dutifully kept the gloves on, stroking lengths of leather against them and listening to the moans and gasps she could wring out of the two of them. She expected something similar to her previous experiences with two men in terms of position; however, they both had other ideas and stayed up on their knees, facing one another and sandwiching her between them. There was the urge to protest – there was no way her legs would be able to handle more of this kind of strain, not after that orgasm, but then they were rolling on condoms onto one another’s cocks and kissing and her ability to think clearly was more or less gone again.

Either intuitively or by blessed coincidence, Steve lifted Natasha under the thighs and slid her down the full length of his cock while Bucky pressed into her back and pushed mindfully, cautiously into her from behind; she didn’t have to bear a single bit of her own weight, pressed deliciously between two hard torsos and free from the responsibility of movement. Her head lolled back onto Bucky’s shoulder as Steve sucked at her throat, Bucky stealing the air from her mouth with deep, burning kisses. Both holes thoroughly stuffed and stretched, she was free to enjoy what was quickly deemed the Cadillac of fucking, the smoothest ride despite all the potential for disaster or pain. They were impossibly strong – seriously, having one arm didn’t slow Bucky down a single fucking bit – and intuitive, watching her face, listening to her movements, noting the throb and tightening of her cunt and ass around them for those cues she wasn’t quite clear-headed enough to give. She squeezed Steve’s shoulder, reached behind her for Bucky’s hair, traded goddamn perfect kisses with them, watched them kiss each other over her shoulder. Bliss.

The grind of Steve’s abdomen against her clit sent that corkscrew jolt up her spine again and it took nothing to make her come now, the two men fucking an entire aria of moans out of her as she came and came. They were drenched with sweat, the slick of skin on skin and the leather on her extremities making her that much hotter. Her hair clung to Bucky’s jaw, her own neck. Steve angled back just right, let her lean her full weight back onto Bucky as he lined up his shot just so and began to hammer into her g-spot with an athlete’s singular focus. It was a pulled trigger, a jerk and curl so intense she damn near shot him back out, coming so hard she lost her vision for that mere second and could only focus on the throbbing, the thrumming, the jerking of Bucky’s cock as he blew hard into the condom, the subsequent push of Steve all the way up against her cervix when that telltale throb took him too.

Natasha didn’t remember climbing off of them, only breathless, giddy laughter as she relished the cool air on her hands and feet as they finished undressing her. She remembered Bucky’s mindful swipe of a cloth he’d somehow produced like fucking magic, easing the drenched slick of her thighs, the lube and come and sweat. She remembered the sinking of the mattress on either side of her as they sprawled out like big golden cats, sleepy and fucked out and so beautiful it was nearly intimidating.

She remembered feeling satisfied, truly satisfied, for the first time in what felt like forever.

She did not remember falling asleep.

 

 

 


	5. Actions Speak Louder Than Vags

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _There was no walk of shame, only a walk of smug. Deep, abiding smugness. The greatest smug of all._
> 
> Natasha's wild night changes her perspective on a few things, including friendship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies, always late, life interferes, you all know the drill at this point. 
> 
> Several projects in the air at the moment but this is not abandoned, Lascivious is chugging along and the 3rd part is in the works. Much more Natasha to come. 
> 
> Halfway point!
> 
> x  
> Noccalula  
> http://noccalula-writes.tumblr.com

Instead of the weirdness that often followed a deeply unconventional sexual liaison or just slipping out unnoticed, Natasha had awoken to find both Steve and Bucky up and making breakfast. She was perfectly fine with gathering her clothes, trying to zip up her own dress and scurrying out before things could get awkward; instead she’d been offered coffee and a waffle with fruit. Who turned down a waffle with fruit with two of the most gorgeous men they’d ever met in their life? No one, especially not Natasha, especially not a Natasha who was so pleasantly sore she might never recover from the onslaught of smug she would be awash in for the rest of her week.

Steve did modeling almost full time, mostly independent gigs but he had done his time in catalogues and a few tv commercials. He’d had a small role in an HBO show about 1940’s Miami but hated the experience so much that he’d never so much as gone to another audition again – “plastic people with no souls doing their best to suck the marrow out of anything living” was how Bucky transcribed Steve’s feelings on the matter. He was a part-time personal trainer as well, having gotten his certification through his husband’s classes.

Bucky had served two tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, losing his arm and almost all of his deployed unit when his Humvee rolled over an IED. The rest of the story was mostly intuited by Natasha based on the things he said and more specifically, the things he didn’t say – he’d come home with plenty of fanfare for a wounded vet but a headful of nightmares he couldn’t wake up from and no one willing to help when the photo-ops diminished. There were no photos of his time in the hospital even though Steve mentioned offhand that the governor himself had visited Bucky, no medals hanging on the wall though she was sure he’d received one. The patriotism one would expect in a man who was now disabled because of serving his country was glaringly absent.

Natasha wondered how much of that had to do with the fact that he’d had a husband waiting on him back home instead of a wife; she couldn’t picture Steve’s sunny face wracked with so much fear and sadness, couldn’t quite see him beside a hospital bed or arguing on the phone with insurance companies. But their marriage was blithely normal considering their third party paramour sitting at the table, finishing up her waffle and watching the two of them move around with the ease of people who know one another’s special behaviors intimately. Steve washed a mug. Bucky reached out for it before he was even finished drying it, already opening the cabinet without looking.

It seemed blissful, really. Enviable. Comfortable.

Nonetheless, Bucky had turned his inevitable future as inspiration porn for well-intentioned but ignorant ableists into a lucrative career as a personal trainer, and he had a gym to get to.

“See you tonight,” he warmly slipped his arm around Steve’s waist and dipped in for a fast but affectionate kiss.

Natasha looked away, feeling intrusive and a little embarrassed by their honesty, but was caught off guard when suddenly Bucky was in her face as well, the smell of his aftershave a jolt like the brush of his stubble against her face. He kissed her a little deeper, a little dirtier but just as briefly before flashing that grin. Maybe it was the memories of the night before, maybe it was him relishing the surprise on Natasha’s face, but he smiled wider and grabbed his keys, heading out the door with his pack slung over his shoulder.

Feeling a flush of warmth creep up her neck, Natasha looked over to find Steve smiling at her, bright as the goddamn sun and worthy of any catalogue, any tv show, any fine portrait. Somebody needed to paint this man on the Sistine chapel’s ceiling.

“Y’know, when I met you, I thought you were beautiful and really sexy, you kinda carry yourself in this smoldery sort of way,” Steve chuckled, tossing his drying rag onto the counter, “But you’re actually kind of cute, too.”

***

There was no walk of shame, only a walk of smug. Deep, abiding smugness. The greatest smug of all.

Steve had given her a t-shirt to wear since last night’s dress and heels, while they certainly would have contributed to a very memorable trip home, would have been uncomfortable as hell. Bucky’s basketballs shorts were baggy and hung unflatteringly down to her knees, but she’d tied up the cord to keep them around her hips and though she felt like the hottest of messes, she had to admit – it was comfortable. Digging into her purse past the layers of fabric and the now fabled leather gloves she’d probably be mounting on the wall, she finally fished out her phone, expecting a 2% battery darkened screen or no dice at all – unlucky, considering she’d assured Steve she’d get her own Lyft home no matter how much he tried to get one for her. Much to her shock, the screen was bright, she had a few notifications on Facebook and three texts, and her battery was sitting somewhere around 93%. Someone must have charged it that morning.

They really were the perfect one-night stand.

Which lead to the next question: how could she go about making this a multiple-night stand, and would it destroy the magic of the experience if she did?

_I take it you’re not coming in today and Scott just called out_ , read one of the two texts from Jessica, and the other: _Do you want me to stay for both shifts?_

Fuck. Natasha had intended to work the next day but hadn’t bothered to check the time since she’d gotten caught up at the table. It was nearly 10am – not too bad. She typed with one hand, shoes dangling in the other.

_No, I’ll be in for the full afternoon, just need a couple hours. Can I bring you lunch?_

It was a few short clicks and then a Lyft was on its way, coming to pick her up at the next intersection. Honestly, she might have considered walking further if she’d had comfortable footwear on hand but this was the one area that her hosts hadn’t been able to accommodate – she was padding barefoot down the sidewalk with her near fetish heels in one hand, phone in the other. The California sun was shining, the air scented with the tang of the not-so-distant ocean, the sounds of foot traffic and cars a pleasant reminder of the cityscape she so loved her entire life but without the rushed bustle of New York. The warmth felt nice on her shoulders, across the bridge of her nose as the breeze tousled her mess of hair and she knew she was walking a little looser (in more ways than one), breathing a little easier. Less anxious. Less guarded. Funny how a good orgasm or three could do that to a girl.

_Her phone chimed in response. Nah, we’ve got all the catering leftovers here, we’re eating like kings. Thanks though. See you later._

Jessica. Natasha had been spending so much time trying to safeguard against her own emotional fallout that she’d completely missed that she had a mirror twin standing next to her – surly, defensive New Yorker – who was actually putting in the effort to be friends, to be available. She’d checked on her the night before at the event. She wasn’t inviting herself over for sleepovers and hair braiding but she’d shown friendship in a way that would have appealed much more to Natasha’s own sensibilities if only she’d been paying any attention. She was inviting Nat out with the other girls, no less, trying to build bridges and make her feel included. It was all a level of personal consideration that it was a little jarring when viewed in the sober light of day, especially when Natasha measured it up against how willfully ignorant and ungrateful she’d been about it. Every lie she’d told herself about not getting close or maintaining an ‘appropriate’ distance from her employees while still trying to not be ‘the boss’ per se was smashed when she finally opened the third text.

Tony, about 3am, with an accompanying picture of himself in a gimp mask and a dildo in each hand.

_You were glorious tonight. Thank you for everything you’ve done here. Enjoy your two dicks._

Natasha bit her lower lip, smiling into her screen until the horn of her waiting Lyft yanked her back into the moment.

Time to drop the antiseptic act. _Duly noted, universe. Duly noted_.

***

It took no time to get another invitation extended for a trip to the beach once Natasha could convince Jess that she really, truly meant it and wasn’t going to bail.

Jessica’s shitty pick-up truck had been backed up to face the ocean so that the four of them – Natasha, Jessica, Claire and Jane – could pile into the bed and watch the sunset over the waves, drinking from the little blue cooler bag of beer and frozen daiquiri pouches with Capri Sun esque jab straws. It felt nice to Natasha to see them all like this, in their shorts and tank tops and flip flops (or in Claire’s case, nothing but a tiger striped bikini). The dress code at work was certainly casual but there was always a new level of freedom on the beach, no one bothering with makeup save Jessica’s smear of melting mascara and Jane’s constant chapstick reapplications, everyone sun-browned or pinkened with their salt tousled hair.

And of course, something about being near the ocean made everyone inherently more philosophical, especially at night. Clint had a theory that it stemmed from sitting so close to the primordial soup from which we once crawled millennia ago (“makes you remember how small you are, and on some basic level makes us remember where we once sat on the evolutionary scale – plus, all that sun gets your vitamin D going and suddenly you’re weeping about how good your croissant was this morning”).

Speaking of Clint.

“So where is he now?” Jane asked, pulling at the straw jabbed into her silver packet, her lips stained strawberry pink as she continued with a truly impressive stonewall of amnesia to anything at all that she said or did at the Leather E-Xhibit, “Still in Cambodia?”

Natasha raised her brows and shrugged blithely, teeth clicking around the glass mouth of her beer bottle. It had been hard enough to tell them the reader’s digest version of the story but much to her relief it felt somehow that the two pieces of her life were collated in some way that made more sense. She might have spared any details about Wanda’s personal life but at least the rest of the female staff of Salacious now knew the East Coast Brownsville store manager, the whole thing feeling a bit like she’d finally gotten Wanda some much-deserved recognition whether she was there to hear it or not. And of course, Clint, now a specter that had been addressed in his following her across the country. Natasha was afraid that maybe it would grant him a new power, secretly hopeful that maybe acknowledging him would set him free and un-haunt her head and heart. Truly, both felt lighter after her night with the Wonder Husbands, but she knew there was work to be done within her that neither of them could do, no matter how ‘within her’ they had both been.

This was a matter for introspection, friends, and the kind of soul searching she was still afraid of, but a little less so now.

“Probably not, his employer bumped them around a lot. But, wherever he is, it’s not California so the writing is on the wall.”

Natasha felt Jessica watching the side of her face and turned to glance over, a little startled by the vulnerability there. Her dark brows were still, her mouth still the same apathetic pout as always, but there was something in Jess’s eyes that was softer, kinder than usual. Understanding. Natasha patted her thigh absently and rested her head back against the cab to stare out at the waves rippling beneath the rising half-moon.

“That blows,” Claire sympathized, “But you tried, man. You took the big swing at it, and even if it didn’t work out, that’s a pretty big victory for the forces of love.”

“Is it a victory if you don’t walk away with anything?” Natasha asked softer, shrugging, “I just feel lucky to have scraped myself back into one piece to get here, and I feel fucking stupid for letting it bust me up that badly.”

“We don’t control this shit and you know it. Sometimes we’re lucky just to fall in love with someone who isn’t fucking awful, and that’s the best we can ask for, no matter how it ends.”

There was a pause of silence as they all chewed on Claire’s words, Jane’s face turned out towards the water as she remained uncharacteristically quiet.

“Well,” Jessica began, getting up with a grunt to hop off the truck bed, “Do yourself a favor – take your friend Maria’s advice and don’t fuck your ex. I don’t care how hot he is.”

A collective groan came from the other three for three entirely different reasons. Claire laughed, leaning her head back against the railing to look at Nat – fuck, she was beautiful – with that big, clever grin.

“Well that’s just bullshit. Lawyer ex is too, too tempting. I’d just let go and let god.”

“Sleeping with your exes is a terrible idea,” Jessica pointed, fishing around in the truck door for a new pack of smokes, “It’s like puttin’ a fuckin’ cigarette into a skeleton’s mouth and expecting it to come back to life.”

“But she’s not expecting it to come back to life if she’s just going after that good-ass nostalgia dick,” Claire countered.

Natasha laughed, raising her brows before copping another swig, “Oh, understatement. He was incredible.”

“All the more reason to not fall back into the trap. You’re still raw from this Clint fucker, don’t give Matt a chance to capitalize on that vulnerability and get you more fucked up over something you don’t want. Trust me.”

There was a grudging tone to Jessica’s voice as she lit up a cigarette, keeping her distance downwind at the previous request of the others. Clearly, someone had experience in the matter.

“Whatever the case, you got two perfectly good places to take all that shit out on right now, girl,” Claire pointed at Natasha with a wink and chuckled, drawing a laugh from Jessica as well, “Your own personal scratching posts. That’s once in a lifetime shit, get your money’s worth.”

As if on cue, Natasha felt her phone vibrate in her pocket and fished it out, smiling when she saw the text message.

_We’d love to have you over for dinner. And maybe eat some food too._

“I’m gonna assume that’s them if you’re grinnin’ ear to ear. Speak of the finer-than-hell devils…”

She’d been a little nervous that maybe it really was a one-off evening, glorious and perfect in all its smoldering lasciviousness but never to be repeated. Maybe they did this with a constant rotating door of women. Maybe it was a hot, hot story she’d tell someone else’s grandchildren before the nursing home caught up with her and dragged her back to her room.

The text marked Bucky told her otherwise. Game on.

Jane cut her eyes back at Natasha for a long, quiet moment before shifting to get up as well, brushing her thin hands on the pockets of her hemp shorts.

“Well,” she mused, “Experimentation is the foundation of discovery.”

Natasha practically felt Jessica bite down on her cigarette, cutting off a snarky reply.

***

The dress Natasha had picked was perfect – layered black tank dress over a gray undershift, soft cotton that looked elegant but short enough to be comfortable in the heat and suggestive. Understated, utilitarian, fitted nicely to her curves. It was a good dress, easy to accessorize, good to let a lacy black bra peek out just enough from the slouch in the front. On trend enough for New York, breezy enough for California. Maybe she was finally getting this bicoastal duplicity down.

Bucky had left it on her when he laid her out on the now empty dining room table, the hem hiked up to her hips and the top pulled down to expose said bra. Her arms bent up above her head, fingers white-knuckle gripping the edge of the table as he sucked at her clit, her lips with hungry, slow purpose. His five fingers dug into the softness of her inner thigh, keeping her pinned open between that and his shoulder, and he hummed hungry, smug moans into her slick flesh while she jerked and stuttered against the formica table top. The sound of a key in a lock and the clatter of an opening door put Natasha’s nerves on edge, a jolt of fear of being found out, of being seen so exposed hit her out of the blue and she tried to sit up with a start only to find Steve standing in the kitchen doorway, something between a smile and a smirk caught on his mouth as his bag slid down to the floor.

“I see you started eating without me.”

Bucky scoffed a laugh into her and pulled back just enough to speak, his voice muffled against the wetness of her pussy, “Slap yourself for that pun, please.”

Natasha laughed nervously – of course this was okay, why on earth would she assume it wouldn’t be okay? – and laid back, hand over her mouth, letting her eyes wander Steve’s immaculate body as he came around the table to eye her like she was in fact literal dinner. One big hand went to her stomach to softly stroke beneath her bunched up dress, trailing up to the lace over her breasts to pinch softly at her pink nipples straining at the fabric. He wet his lower lip just as Bucky started in on her clit with a steady, quick sucking and her eyes fluttered despite the urge to keep looking at Steve. Stare at him forever. How did one human being get that beautiful? Whose babies did he eat? What god took sacrifices to put the actual sun in a human body?

“You good?” Steve asked smokily, hand slipping up to Natasha’s face to cradle her cheek against his palm like the sweet bean he was, “Looks like Buck’s enjoying himself.”

Natasha made a noise in response that might have been embarrassing were she not currently too close to coming to care and shut her eyes, blocked out the sight of Steve for just a few moments. Too much, too intense. Her lips fell open and she turned her head to catch his thumb between them, sucking eagerly and moaning around the taste of the salt of his skin, the tang of metal from where he’d been holding his keys. The responding sound from him brought her right up to the edge until suddenly the wet, damnably good pressure on her clit was gone. Her eyes snapped open in bewilderment and not a small amount of irritation – really? – but Steve was pulling his thumb slowly out of her mouth to move to the end of the table, slowly kneeling beside Bucky.

“Oh sweet Jesus,” she gasped out when Steve took the other leg and pinned it wide, dipping down to lick along her slick lips, his cheek pressing into Bucky’s, “Dreams really do come true.”

Steve laughed, Bucky turning to kiss the side of his golden face briefly before they both delved into her as best they could stack themselves, Bucky dipping to push his tongue inside of her while Steve tongued softly at her swollen, aching clit. Half out of disbelief, Natasha shot both hands down to grab two different sets of hair – the slight stiffness of Steve’s lightly gelled locks, a fistful of Bucky’s soft long strands – and moaned out gracelessly. This had to be a pipe dream, the best fantasy she told herself while buzzing away quietly in her own apartment and pretending not to have feelings about anything anymore.

But the urge to hide out in the cave of her own making and do everything in her power to blitz the name “Clint” from her thoughts had died down significantly in such a short period of time. In some ways, this frightened her – she didn’t want to be _over_ it, didn’t want to admit that the game was lost. On the other hand, it was fucking purgatory, so any pass to get out was probably a good idea.  Tony had given her permission to move on. Wanda had given her permission to move on. Maria had put both her metaphorical fists to Natasha’s back to push her as much as she could from a full nation away. And of course, Clint had sent her with his blessing and a heart full of sad love.

It wouldn’t stop hurting altogether maybe, but it was certainly time to try.

Natasha came with a violent arch of her back, gushing hot and sweet into _someone_ ’s face, the other laughing blissfully while the California sun streamed in and pinkened a soft burn onto Natasha’s pale skin.

 

 


	6. The Vag Is In Your Court

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“So,” Matt began, crossing one leg over the other in his New York dark suit with the jacket slung over his chair, “I started to bring you the notes about the differences between LLC copywrite and corporation copywrite."_  
>  He stopped for effect, and Natasha knew he was onto her without a word. She shrugged, well aware he couldn’t see it but knowing that Matt was more gifted at intuiting people than nearly anyone else she’d ever met before. She had been half hoping that she might evade his radar. No such luck.  
> “You started to?”  
> “Natasha you’re a Russian literature and history scholar. You could recite three pages of Tolstoy right now if I asked you to. There’s no way this is beyond your grasp.”  
> Natasha wasn’t sure which part was harder to admit, the part where she had been busted cruising her ex for lunch or the part where yeah, all that was true but honestly, it all still was a little confusing. Pride forbid her to cop to the second, so she relented on the first.  
> Matt’s voice gave away the smirk before it ever showed up, “So I guess we just wanted to see each other that badly, huh?”  
> Options are everywhere. Natasha, make good choices.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll keep it brief:
> 
> Sorry for the delay, I've been in the hospital. I'm doing better now, thankfully, and the gears are moving again. 
> 
> More coming. 
> 
> Visit me at http://noccalula-writes.tumblr.com for more
> 
> x  
> Noccalula

Salacious West Coast decided to throw a barbeque for the Fourth of July.

While the Crimson Apple had been a perfect venue for the exhibit, this particular event needed to run a little less formal – as formal as assless leather chaps got anyway – and a little more freewheeling and fun. Vanessa Mariano was a woman of many mysteries though and on the suggestion of Trish-via-Jess sent Natasha a short list of worthy party planners who could secure permits for outside events. Making connections had paid off in a real big way, and Natasha couldn't help but be a little proud of herself. None of this had been her strong suit when the expansion started and god knows she still hated planning a party but now she felt at least halfway capable of doing it. After all, the Leather X-hibit had gone over splendidly and generated considerable buzz for the upcoming company, garnering a few mentions in local magazines and an invitation to join a local commerce panel aimed at independent business.

“I don’t know how independent we really qualify as,” Natasha pointed out to Tony, both feet up on the faucet as she reclined in her bathtub, “We’re under an LLC that’s probably going to get expanded to a corporation, right? Isn’t that how this works?”

“Whoa nelly,” Tony cautioned from New York, mouth half-full of lo mein, “There’s a whole rigamarole in becoming a corporation, I’m fine with the LLC for now. If we start overgenerating or we opt to open a wider chain then we’ll have that conversation, but until then let’s just feather this nest as comfortably as we can.”

Natasha picked up her beer bottle from the tile floor, taking a thoughtful swig while he explained. Adding to the imposter syndrome that was blessedly beginning to ebb was the fact that she didn’t fully understand the way that kind of licensing worked; she had read the wiki, of course, and about four other articles as dry as an iPhone in a bag of rice but for whatever reason it just wasn’t sticking. This irritated Nat to no end as she’d been a stellar student, able to commit to studies that might have seemed unendurable to plenty of others (Russian Literature, anyone?) with ease. Now? She was lucky if her attention span got her through the rest of the California Novelties catalogue in one run.

“So how are my gem plugs selling?”

Natasha cracked a smirk. “Like hotcakes. We’re capitalizing on the unicorn trend in a real big way right now and apparently having a huge fake gem in your asshole is part of being a unicorn. We should get some of the ones with the rainbow tails attached.”

Tony scoffed out a laugh, “You really want Bronies in the shop?”

“I don’t wanna know how your nearly-fifty year old ass knows what Bronies are.”

“I’ve been on the internet once or twice.”

Tony was nothing if not savvy – of course he’d know about all sorts of sexual subcultures, not only because it was his job to but because he was curious and weird to boot. Kin to Natasha’s heart. Besides, the joke was an obvious one; Tony could pound out html better than Nat ever even thought about doing.

“Hey,” she changed the tone, “Thank you, by the way. Almost forgot.”

“For what, the box?” Tony paused for only a second, “Oh, yeah, no problem. You asked, I figured I’d better get in that window while I could. It’s a good sign you even asked.”

Through the open bathroom door, Natasha could see the corner of the Clint box as it sat near her open closet. She hadn’t had the heart to break into the thing yet, opting instead to let it camp out on the floor until the moment struck her as appropriate to go into it. The fear was in the balance, as usual: did she keep it closed and always feel a nagging sense of having missed something, or did she open it and in turn risk tearing open a wound that was only now beginning to close?

“I’m trying,” she offered weakly, staring at the box like it might grow legs and scuttle into the bathroom to drown her in the tub.

“I know,” Tony said with a gentle sigh, “Chin up, kid. You’re doing a really great job over there and I’m so proud of you. Really.”

The sentiment pulled Natasha out of her box-quandry and she smiled, genuinely touched. Tony was never unkind but he didn’t offer praise that wasn’t sandwiched between two jokes very often. She’d take it where she could get it.

“Is Wanda doing okay? I haven’t been able to Skype with her all week.”

“That’s because she’s had the flu. Goddamn brother brought it back from wherever the hell he went last weekend. She’s been a tissue sniffle mess when she’s been here, I finally just made her go home with some pho. Summertime flu is the worst.”

Nat made a mental note to send a care box.

“Listen,” Tony shifted back into almost-business voice, “Can you do me a favor? She’s been kind of weird lately anyway, can you maybe call her and see if there’s something going on? I wouldn’t ask but I know she’s more comfortable with you in that respect than me.”

A prickle of alarm hit her as she considered the various ways in which a secret relationship with one’s own twin brother could possibly be affecting her day to day behavior. _Fuck_. “Of course, I’ll call her tomorrow, let her get a little more rest tonight.”

After shuffling out of the tub all pruned and wrinkly, Natasha came over hesitantly to the box on the floor, staring down it at as she considered that maybe she ought to have checked it for explosives first. Ridiculous. Clint would never deliberately hurt her. But of course the analogy stood as well as stung – it could mean several things blowing up in her face. Opening it could be freeing, or it could be devastating, or it could be one before the other, and maybe that was necessary but she was already 3 Blue Moons in tonight with no desire to drunk-sob over whatever in the hell was in there.

She bent to pick up the box with both hands, judging its weight like a reverse Christmas present, resenting its heftiness. She slid it into the top of her closet. Out of sight, out of mind.

***

 The lack of an understanding around the growth of an LLC was still bothering her, so Natasha called Matt Murdock the next day to ask for some clarification. At least that’s what she told herself about why she called him. The smile was audible in his voice and the next thing she knew, the two of them were meeting for lunch sans-Foggy at an outdoor café near the store.

“So,” Matt began, crossing one leg over the other in his New York dark suit with the jacket slung over his chair, “I started to bring you the notes about the differences between LLC copywrite and corporation copywrite.”

He stopped for effect, and Natasha knew he was onto her without a word. She shrugged, well aware he couldn’t see it but knowing that Matt was more gifted at intuiting people than nearly anyone else she’d ever met before. She had been half hoping that if she kept her curiosities concealed even from herself, she might evade his radar. No such luck.

“You started to?” she took the bait.

“Natasha you’re a Russian literature and history scholar. You could recite three pages of Tolstoy right now if I asked you to. There’s no way this is beyond your grasp.”

Natasha wasn’t sure which part was harder to admit, the part where she had been busted cruising her ex for lunch or the part where yeah, all that was true but honestly, it all still was a little confusing. Pride forbid her to cop to the second, so she relented on the first.

Matt’s voice gave away the smirk before it ever showed up, “So I guess we just wanted to see each other that badly, huh?”

The confession pulled a grin out of Natasha whether she liked it or not, “I guess so.”

They’d done this a thousand times in college, no matter if it was just a temporary patch when their schedules didn’t permit enough hookups or the half dozen times their impassioned act hit its threshold and they broke up for the umpteenth time just to get back together in two days. The circling felt so familiar that for only a moment it felt as though maybe it had never ended, just an extended pause in the dance before both players were back on their feet. They grinned at each other from across the table as Natasha took advantage of the fact that she was free to watch Matt as closely as she liked knowing he could only speculate as to the longevity.

“I gotta admit, Tash,” he said, and the old nickname cut her right under the ribs with the nostalgia knife, not painful but still somehow stirring, “I didn’t see you as a business owner but if someone had told me you were going to be, a sex shop is far from the last thing I’d have imagined. Makes sense.”

“Oh?” she recovered smoothly, dipping a chip into guacamole, “Is that some sort of jab at my past life of promiscuity?”

Matt laughed, a familiar and warm sound, and she marveled to herself how he his laughter hadn’t changed; he still smiled ear to ear, head thrown back without an ounce of detectable self-consciousness. “Oh, I think we both know I don’t have a single leg to stand on if I’m going to judge someone else’s sexual proclivities. I’m just less…” he collected his words with a smirk, “ _Outward_ than you, like always.”

Natasha snorted, “If nothing’s really changed then I hate to break it to you, you’re not as secretive as you like to think you are. The only people who didn’t know you were a deviant were your professors.”

Sighing with something like amused defeat, Matt picked up his glass and knocked the ice around for a moment. “Yeah, alright. I may not be as good in real life as I am in my head at wielding a secret identity. But I like to think I don’t scream ‘easy’ from a distance. I am supposed to be a good Catholic boy, you know.”

Natasha smiled so hard it nearly hurt, chuckling into her own drink. The Good Catholic Boy. That was indeed always College Boyfriend Matt Murdock’s shtick, and he might have pulled it off with nearly everyone he met but Nat knew kindred when she saw it. Beneath the sensible sweaters and the boyish smile, beneath the polite aloofness and kind but distant disposition she saw him for what he really was – a man who walked like he knew himself in a fight, with or without the walking stick. A man who paid so much more attention than anyone was giving him credit for. Sharp, quick-witted and eerily perceptive even without the consideration of his disability. Self-possessed to the Nth degree. It had been sexier than hell then, pronouncedly so in a sea of wee-twenties guys who barely knew their own elbows from their assholes, much less anything useful about someone else’s asshole.

Natasha couldn’t deny it. It was sexier than hell _now_.

This was a terrible, terrible idea. Maria warned about this. She knew not to go out to lunch with her hot college ex.

“Good Catholic Boy,” she mocked in a mutter, making him smile again, “I remember you doing some really naughty not-Catholic things.”

Matt’s lip caught in his teeth, just at the edge. It was so subtle she might have missed if she hadn’t been looking right at his mouth. He sighed and laughed, a faint flush moving up his cheeks.

“That’s my gimmick.”

The rest of lunch held that same static-electricity charge, like if Natasha reached across the table and touched Matt’s idly tapping fingers she might get a jolt of something that could be pleasant, could be very not. The conversation was just as fast-paced as always – rare was it that Natasha sat down to talk with anybody other than Tony with her penchant for snappy one-liner exchanges – and the laughs frequent, his sounding more and more like the beautiful music of a memory as the hour ticked on and the mojitos kept coming. It was blissful, an oasis of New York nostalgia in this strange state of California – like Jessica but loaded with personal memory.

“You’ve got to come to this barbeque,” Natasha offered when they were standing up, pushing chairs back in after the check had been fought over and paid (Matt won, he could bill it as a client lunch, and she didn’t counter that she could list it as a business expense as well).

“You’re on,” he smiled, no fight.

***

 “So you’re going to sleep with your ex.”

Natasha cracked an eye open and moaned softly as the vision of Bucky laying near her feet began to clear. He took one of her pale feet in his hand and began to knead at the arch expertly – there was really nothing this motherfucker wasn’t good at – as he gave her that wolfish grin, resting his head on the pile of comforter.

“I am not going to sleep with my ex,” Natasha protested with a groan before pausing, convincing herself not to look to her side at the expression Steve was surely giving her, “…I am not _planning_ on sleeping with my ex.”

Beside her, Steve’s warm voice rumbled against her shoulder where his head rested and she could hear his smile without looking at him. “I don’t think you need to plan for it per se, but I definitely think you’re going to do it.”

Natasha grunted dissent, twisting just enough to stretch; she was pleasantly fucked-out and sore, buzzing with the endorphins of a solid rogering and not one but two stellar orgasms. Bucky had been waiting on the sidewalk to walk her up and upon entering it was maybe thirty seconds before Steve had her lifted up in his arms, kissing her stupid while Bucky fished out condoms and lube. They’d taken turns on her, then sandwiched her between them until she was totally sated before Bucky pushed Steve over onto the bed, fucking into him hard and fast until they both came. It was breathlessly beautiful to watch. Both holes burned in the best kind of way. Coughing hurt. Smugness.

“Listen, there’s an appeal there, I’m not gonna lie.” Natasha’s resolved tone broke into a soft laugh – busted, and she knew it – as she started to idly rake fingernails through Steve’s disheveled blonde mop. “Like some real nostalgia shit that’s connected to a lot of good vagina memories, but I’ve had enough with the road once traveled if you know what I mean.”

Bucky gave her a small smile that skewed less amused, more sympathetic as he kneaded the broad pad of his thumb against the ball of her foot, making her sigh and shut her eyes again half from the sensation and half to avoid a look that echoed disturbingly like pity was somewhere in there.

“I’m all for new horizons,” Steve offered, smiling slow as he blinked sleepy cornflower blue eyes at her, the perfect golden retriever of a man.

Natasha smirked and dipped, bending to kiss him as he arched up to receive, “How long until the two of you aren’t new anymore, though?”

“I dunno,” Bucky offered from his spot, “We can be new and exciting every time, or we can become part of a routine. If you’re pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down.”

“ _Buck_ ,” Steve clucked, using one broad foot to gently push his partner, “Maybe when she’s less overwhelmed.”

A stir in the depth of Nat’s gut struck her eyes back open and she caught her lip in her teeth, craning to look at one and then the other. What was this vague conspiratorial exchange all about? Knowing to speak before it had time to settle into fear-like suspicion, Natasha moved up onto her elbows, displacing Steve back to the mattress with a groan.

“Oh? What’s this ganging up secret-y secret stuff?”

Bucky shrugged nonchalantly and looked away to Steve, who was rubbing his face and spoke with half-muffled affectation. “Ah, nothing serious, Natasha. You’ve got a lot on your plate right now.”

“Tell me,” Natasha watched him, wondering when she became the kind of person who panicked about the unsaid things. She knew when. She just didn’t want to admit it to herself.

Steve sighed and looked back down at Bucky, who offered back that ever-damnable smile.

“We don’t do this sort of thing often, despite what you may think,” Steve began, turning to his side and propping up on one elbow to continue in a slow, careful way, “Because we rarely find a third partner that we have this good of chemistry with. You’re kind of the glass slipper we were looking for.”

None of this sounded like the bad thing Natasha was concerned about, so she offered a small smile before nodding at him to continue.

“So,” he began again like a man offering up something to lose, “Bucky and I would like to invite you to be a more permanent fixture. I mean, not _permanent_ permanent, more like a recurring role.”

“A guest star,” Bucky interjected.

“Guest star, yes,” Steve nodded, a small smile breaking at the corner of his mouth as he studied Natasha’s face with something like bashfulness, “Someone with a comfort level here. Someone who can make themselves at home, and maybe be here for dinner if they want, and maybe not wear condoms if they’re okay with that?”

“You’re talking about a _third_ , third. Like a real third. Fluid bonding and everything?” Natasha asked, the tangle in her gut slipping into something that felt almost sweet. It almost felt like joy, if only it hadn’t come with about a thousand more questions.

As if sensing this, Steve raised his hand defenselessly. “No reason to lock you down, or make it monogamous or polo-gamous or whatever, like you’re free to come and go as you please. Nobody’s trying to lock you down.”

“Yet,” Bucky grinned like a shark and Steve nearly hissed at him, trying to push him over with his foot again. He laughed, letting Natasha’s foot go and raking back his flop of dark hair to smack onto his back, stare up at the both of them, “But seriously, Nat, who knows where it ends up but we’d like you here as often as you wanna be here. We both know you’re still getting over your ex, and that’s cool. We’d like to help you with that.”

Steve nodded, worrying his lower lip between his teeth until it was berry pink and shiny. “We get tested regularly. We don’t have other partners right now, and even if we did we would be using protection with them. This is all contingent on you being okay with that, of course.”

“Is this solely because you want to stop using condoms?” Natasha sat up, the churning feeling forcing movement out of her though the smile on her face wouldn’t drop away. She rested her elbows on her drawn knees and looked from one man to the other. Was this the real life? Was this just fantasy? Who in the fuck got to rebound with not one but two gorgeous men who were as in love with each other as they were into fucking you? Who writes this shit!?

“Oh no, no,” Steve sat up in turn, concerned, “Not at all, we can use them from now until forever if you want, it’s just the way it usually goes.”

Natasha considered the thought and a flush moved up her chest and cheeks so fast she barely knew it was there before both men were eyeing her skin. Both of them, all hard muscles and stubble and careful, articulate hands. Steve pressing bone-deep into her, shuddering, but nothing between them. Bucky pounding into her ruthlessly like he had with Steve, spilling over with the same intimacy. _Fuck_.

“So, what you’re saying,” Natasha’s eyes fell only slightly hooded but it was sign enough, pricked up both sets of ears with the husky turn in her voice, “Is that you both want to come inside of me.”

Steve sighed softly, swallowing. Bucky nodded, voice grown as edgy as her own. “I know I do.”

It was ill-advised, of course. Though all parties had conceded to frequent testing – and would again, after the fact, assure one another that all bases had been covered – it had been a force bigger than the three of them that compelled them into a tangle on the bed. Desire, with its ugly-big wingspan and singular way of throwing caution to the wind, pressed them into one another until there was nothing to think of except the tangle of limbs, the taste of sweat, the filling and pressing and pushing and pulling and thrusting and thrusting and thrusting. The idea of being unrestricted, without barriers was irresistible and intimate, something Natasha hadn’t felt a pull towards in ages and the chance to grab it with both hands was too good to pass up.

It wasn’t something she typically loved or thought fondly of, the sensation of a partner coming inside of her. Semen, she could take or leave. But there was an intimacy in the act that had a new velvet allure, probably soft and gentle on the raw and healing skin of her often fraught relationship with vulnerability, and there was something in this idea of having the both of them that made her think nothing of giving in. Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead.

And they did, in rapid succession; first, Steve with a stammer and the exquisite press of his weight against her pelvis, driven all the way inside of her with his chest pressed to hers and their hands laced near their heads, and then Bucky, sitting up but pulling her hip to keep her tightly affixed, his face twisting in ecstasy as he tossed his head back and howled.

The aftermath was the only period of time she’d ever spent near the two of them that could qualify as awkward, mostly as Steve stumbled his concern over his desire to not make a bigger deal than necessary. It was almost sweet, and while Natasha knew this hadn’t been the smartest decision she’d ever made, the trust was there. They were telling the truth, and so was she. The risk factor was narrowed down to one specific point that her IUD had covered, and so what was there to panic about? Nothing, she reminded herself and both of them. Nothing to worry about.

They kissed her goodnight and put her in a cab when she insisted on heading home to get cleaned up, though the urge to sleep over was only getting stronger.

***

Freshly off a Skype conversation with Wanda – atypically cagey indeed, good eye Tony but Nat wasn’t about to call her out cold when she was being as forthcoming as a cinder block – Natasha walked back into her bedroom, raking her still-damp hair back when she stopped and stared up into the dark of her closet. She couldn’t see the box but it didn’t matter, it was either there or her dread of it had given the damn thing life and it was waiting under the bed with piano wire.

Opening it couldn’t be so bad, could it? Tearing off the proverbial band-aid had to be an easier gambit now than it was three months ago, and for fuck’s sakes, there was no better distraction waiting for her than the two that were probably still lounging around their massive bed feeding each other grapes or something. Clint was g-o-n-e gone. Gone baby gone. Gone, girl. The box was the last vestige of her old life and she could either rip it open and let the last of it dissipate, or she could keep it tightly shoved into the top of her closet to gather dust and whatever insects could fucking live in all this sand. It seemed a very clear and decisive action to take one way or another and the only assurance is that whatever path she opted for, that box had the power to change the way she felt about everything in her life at the moment.

Natasha’s chest felt tight as she considered this. California had been a hard adjustment but she had made it, hadn’t she? She had friends now, two guys who probably didn’t want to be called her boyfriends and whom she most definitely didn’t want to be exclusive with but were still more than happy to give her all the sexual attention and affection she could want at interval, a promotion that had made her a major player in a field she loved. It was good. Her equilibrium was still coming back to her and god knew she missed New York, missed Wanda and Maria fiercely, and of course, she missed Clint. She would maybe always miss Clint.

Maybe it was better to keep missing Clint and let that feeling get smaller and smaller than it was to forcibly smother it, bear down on it until the kicking stopped.

The box would live to see another day, unmoved.

Natasha had other things that needed her attention more.

This, in and of itself, was a kind of victory.


	7. Vag It With A Grain of Salt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Once the raffle was over and the vendors were packing it away, Natasha spotted College Boyfriend Matt Murdock from across the bonfire and thunder nearly rolled down her spine._    
>   
>  _He was shirtless and wringing out a tank that was saturated with beer, laughing while Foggy talked next to him and held two cups. Every segment of his abdomen was just as pronounced as she remembered in college even though he’d thickened out some with age, not as boyish-lean but still stacked, ever the boxer. His arms flexed as he twisted the damp fabric and she felt a ripple of heat jolt straight to her clit as she remembered the way he pinned her down at the shoulders, how fast and hard he could drive two fingers into her with a machine’s relentless precision until she was coming all over his sheets, the desk, the wall they were up against. The sheer volume of sex she’d had with this man came flooding back to her as she felt herself go slick wet in a moment’s notice, shifting her legs to test the throb of her pussy against the fabric of her bikini bottom in her shorts._  
>   
>  Salacious West Coast hosts a barbeque. Natasha talks to Jane. Matt Murdock shows up and the fight against rekindling old flames is renewed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO we are back in business, posting every 2-2.5 weeks now until the end of this leg of the story, after which I will be taking a break before picking up part 3. More on me rambling on about this on tumblr. 
> 
> We're over the hump now, on the slide towards the end, and I will give you two heads' (head's? headses?) ups: one, this chapter is crazy long and two, we are going to be venturing into sensitive territory in upcoming chapters. I'll say no more to avoid spoilers but there will be content warnings at the top of each chapter from here on out. 
> 
> Anyway, the world is a terrible awful garbage fire and instead of sleeping 24/7 I'm trying to just write instead, so hopefully that results in a better, less infrequent posting schedule for you guys. ALSO the Hot Cookie Bakery mentioned in this chapter is totally a thing, thanks @anothercover for that beautiful information. 
> 
> Thank you, as always, for the kind words and visits here and on tumblr and all the encouragement. 
> 
> x  
> Noccalula  
> http://noccalula-writes.tumblr.com

The first annual Salacious West Coast Filthy Fourth Barbeque (“Can it be called ‘first annual’ if it’s never happened before? Like isn’t the purpose of ‘annual’ to denote that it happens every year?” “Shut up, Scott”) went off gorgeously. The venue was the parking lot and beachfront back of the Salacious building itself - which was of course ostensibly closed to anyone but staff for the purposes of the day - and tents, tailgates, smokers and grills were lined all over the hot asphalt. Everything from local independent vendors selling wares (that would be available in stores, of course) to sex educators giving condom-application demonstrations and taking questions had set up shop across the expanse. A series of volleyball nets were stuck in the sand behind the building, a booth from a local independent radio station, and of course, a main stage where giveaways would be announced via ticket raffle, with all proceeds going to the local Ryan White HIV chapter. Fireworks were scheduled for sundown.

Thanks to the beach and laid-back vibe, the event itself came together easily. Turns out more people were enthused about planning an outdoor barbeque than a swank exhibition inside of a pricey restaurant. Luke brought volunteers to work the grills, mostly friends of his who wanted to see what this kinky shit was all about. Scott had solicited donations and gift cards for the raffles from local businesses thanks to his surprisingly vast social network. Jessica of course had Trish do a segment to amp up excitement and while the set up was aimed for about two hundred static guests with space for more to come or go, the final count reached up to just shy of a thousand sets of feet passing through at some point through the day.

Tony, ever prepared, had ordered extra food – brats, Hebrew National wieners, vegan-dogs and tofurkey; burgers, bean burgers, soy burgers; every kind of soda and beer under the sun from every local brewery or label. A table full of gorgeously arranged penis-and-vagina shaped cookies on sticks and pastries from the local Hot Cookie Bakery was a particular attraction for everyone, including the staff, who had taken a blue million selfies with chocolate chip dicks in their mouths by the time the crowd really got going.

However, never one to be outdone, Tony had ordered something like two thousand penis-shaped popsicles from some company in Sweden that “exploded” a sherbert cream once they had been sucked on long enough.

“That’s…” Natasha stared as Tony chowed down on a red, white and blue six-incher, “…entirely too far.”

“Fuck yourself,” he offered, holding one out for emphasis.

Claire rearranged the top row of chocolate-iced vulva cookies and smirked up at Scott as he filmed for, well, who knew. Posterity’s sake, maybe.

“Hey Lang,” she asked innocently, “What kind of genitals would you like in your mouth?”

“All of ‘em,” he answered quickly, snagging a pink-iced vanilla vulva and the penis beside it to see if he could possible balance both in one hand.

“Predictable. Also, excellent use of allegory to answer a question.”

“You’re welcome,” he bit the tip off the dick and kept moving.

Jane stood across from Claire, staring over the table with an expression that was only unreadable if the audience had no idea what had been going on with her for the last few weeks. Claire opted not to say a word. Too easy.

Natasha’s pale shoulders were pinkening only slightly thanks to the constant application of Sun Bum SPF 1000 – or whatever the highest number Tony could order in bulk on Amazon came in, anyway – but she knew she’d burn a little, regardless. It was the price she paid for both being Russian and wearing next to nothing. In her high-waist jean short-shorts with the embroidery on the butt pockets and her red bikini top and flip flops, she was mostly exposed skin so semi-constant reapplication would be necessary. She pushed her sunglasses up to the crown of her head and squinted, looking around to take quick stock.

Jane was still talking to Claire, her thin shoulders bobbing bare and surprisingly sun-browned as she gestured at something distant. Luke was laughing near the big red grill while Jessica talked to him with something that looked an awful lot like a smile on her pale face, her dingy trucker hat and big glasses protecting the only skin paler than Natasha’s at this event. Logging that away for later discussion, Nat turned to check the opposite row – Scott was now making his way along the string of sex education tents, camera aloft. Throngs of people in bikinis, shorts, sunglasses and tank tops were meandering through and the laughter, the talking were getting louder and louder as their numbers grew in rank. A DJ from the radio station bleated on somewhere behind the building, dulling the words until it was just noise.

Wonderful. It smelled like delicious food cooking, like a third of the guests had either a frozen dick or cookie genitals on their person, nothing had broken down and devolved into a mob tearing down the main platform to get at the cache of giveaway Lelo’s and Jimmyjane’s and the free bowls of bullets and finger vibes – the easiest things to order in bulk – were readily replenished. The crowd was a lovely blend of demographics that went everywhere from couples that probably drove there in a minivan and Doms leading their Subs around on cloth leashes – too hot for leather, even for the committed kinksters, she guessed.

Natasha nearly jumped out of her skin when two slick hands clamped down on her shoulders and began rubbing something viscous onto her, yelping in surprise and nearly choking on her jolly rancher.

“Settle down,” Tony scolded playfully, wax-on and wax-off until a new coat of SPF 25000 was applied, “Seriously, look around. This is a self-cleansing organism. No need to micromanage today.”

“You scared the fuck outta me,” she argued, swatting at his hand half-heartedly when it crossed over the top of her shoulder. “Did you see the lawyers anywhere?”

Not that she was looking for him. Bucky and Steve had been invited but were with the former’s parents until later in the evening so any distraction from the fact that College Boyfriend Matt Murdock was presumably making an appearance was unfortunately gone.

“Nope,” Tony responded quickly and with zero interest in the subject, a blessing all things considered, “But I haven’t exactly been looking.”

Natasha paused for only a moment as she considered the point, smirking softly as she attempted a backwards glance in his direction, “Why don’t you ever bring Claudia to these things? I bet she’d have fun.”

Tony’s cruise around to her front slowed at the mention of _her_ name and the resulting almost-smile was involuntary. His face softened in a way Natasha didn’t often see but knew well he was capable of; he could have the bluster of a businessman until the cows came home but the heart beneath was fooling no one that talked to him for more than an hour, and even if he had been a master at keeping his chewy center hidden away, no one who watched him go through his divorce could have entertained him as an unfeeling person. He’d been through the ringer – he of all people deserved to smile like that about someone.

“ _Eh_ ,” he dismissed, casting his eyes to the straps of Nat’s bikini and untwisting a string if only to stay too occupied to look her in the face, “She’s paler than you and Elvira over there, she’d fry up. Seattle skin and all.”

Nat craned to get right in his gaze, removing his ability to be cagey, and the resulting smile he couldn’t fight was reward enough. She grinned back – finally – and put her hands on Tony’s bare, surprisingly well-muscled shoulders, god knows the old man stayed tight. “Seriously, bring her back around. I’ve only met her the once and if it’s getting serious, we’ve at least gotta be acquaintances.”

Tony’s mouth curved and he made that face he always made when a concession was near.

“Look at this warm, personal moment caught on camera!” Scott said gleefully, sidling up close with the phone, “Which I am in no way intruding upon but documenting for posterity!”

“Of course,” she sighed, making Tony laugh warmly as he clapped a hand gently over Nat’s shoulder, “I’m gonna go get a brat, try to enjoy yourself a little.”

Natasha sighed and swatted after him before turning her attention to Scott and his camera, “See anything that’s actually worth filming yet or are you just here to interrupt me?”

“Interrupting you seemed fun but so far, so good,” he responded blithely, turning to pan the crowd, “This is gonna be great down the road, can’t wait to see where we go from here.”

Natasha caught the happiness in his voice and turned to catch him with a small smile. The original staff had come together like a dream – no infighting beyond bickering for laughs, no one had proved untrustworthy for their position, and no one seemed unhappy except maybe Jane.

Which, of course, was the next item on the list.

***

By the time the sun was lowering down to the horizon Natasha’s shoulders were nearly as pink as the sky itself, thankfully short of blistering red but bound to give her some hell for the next few days. The ocean breeze felt amazing and cool as it whistled up to the building, a bonfire built closer to the shore as the crowd moved from the commerce-curious to those who were intending to stay through the duration, a thousand moving down to a few hundred if that.

Jane sat on the stucco wall that rimmed the back of the building, lean legs dangling as she watched Thor stop to chat with someone beside the fire. He tossed his big handsome head back to laugh and she sighed, a small smile pulling her mouth like a puppeteer’s string, involuntary. It was so easy for Thor to make friends, effervescent and friendly and warm; he counterbalanced her standoffishness, her tendency to be so insular she forgot to be open. To his credit, Thor often told her she didn’t owe it to anyone to be open or friendly, that her own way was good enough; he loved that she got so wrapped up in her thesis or in debates about theoretical physics that the rest of the world disappeared to the fine point of her intellect. He didn’t mind when she forgot things; he bragged about how smart she was and had no qualms with the reality that she was by and large more intelligent than him. Any guy she’d ever spent any time dating before him had been wildly intimidated by her book smarts. Thor really was a keeper.

Natasha watched Jane’s back as she made her way up the ramp, swinging legs over the side to take her seat. Jane shifted uncomfortably for only a moment before glancing over, seeing it was Natasha and nearly freezing. Things hadn’t been markedly uncomfortable per se, more so only in the few moments that Natasha found herself alone with her underling as Jane retreated quickly into Business Face to avoid any broaching of the topic of her come-on back at the X-Hibit. Nat didn’t blame her – that had to be scary and humiliating, and she felt a little remiss in not making the time sooner to try to mend the fence.

“Hey,” she said, holding out a dick popsicle that Jane eyed warily for a long moment before reaching out to take.

“I can’t believe I’m gonna put this thing in my mouth,” she lamented, turning it to study, “But I have to admit the anatomical similarity is really remarkable considering that this is food.”

Natasha chuckled, taking a moment to work on her own. Typical Jane. The silence between them only held for a moment before the latter sighed and glanced at her boss, wind pulling strands of her hair across her sticky sun-kissed face.

“I guess I should have known this was coming.”

“We’ve got a very special working environment in there, I’m not allowing anything to live that might cause trouble in the air down the road.” Natasha shifted one leg beneath the other, sucking thoughtfully at the end of her popsicle-dick as she watched Thor move around by the fire. “Is this something you’ve talked to him about? Not that you have to.”

Jane scoffed before pulling the pop out of her mouth, “Please, he’s up for Boyfriend of the Year every year, he’s the first person I ever told and he’s done nothing but encourage me to check it out. I wasn’t aware it was possible for a human being to be as secure as he is.”

“That’s exactly how it should be, though,” Natasha offered, “A good partner is going to have your back and encourage you to explore yourself if there’s a whole piece you never got around to exploring. I mean, not everyone’s gonna be okay with you sleeping with other people but if he is then all the better.”

“He is,” Jane sighed, inspecting the popsicle’s melting frenulum, “And he has. With him, without him, he said whatever made me comfortable.”

Nat paused to give her the space to continue, raising an eyebrow. Jane glanced over and sighed again, reflexively rubbing a hand over her forehead.

“I’m so embarrassed, Natasha, that was the last place I wanted to say that sort of thing and of course you can’t sleep with me even if you wanted to, you’re my boss.”

“For the record, that’s exactly it. It has nothing to do with you not being attractive or pretty or sexy enough, there’s nothing wrong with you. I just don’t want any part of the weird power struggle that inevitably comes from an employee sleeping with their boss.”

Jane winced and groaned, “I _know_ , I know that.”

Another beat of silence passed before Natasha offered another small smile, shrugging. “It’s amazing, and you absolutely should try it. I mean, it might not be as amazing for you as it was for me but it certainly opens a lot of doors if it turns out to be. But it’s also okay if something is just sexy inside your head and the reality doesn’t match up.”

Saying nothing, Jane scuffed the heels of her sandals along the wall and watched melting juice drip down her hand in contemplative silence.

The thunk of Jessica’s boots – of course she wore motorcycle boots in the blistering heat – alerted them that she was coming before her skinny long legs came whipping over the wall, both chunky heels bouncing off the stucco as she settled into her seat. Her trucker hat was pulled low over her brow, her aviators hanging from the hole-ridden neck of a faded Harley Davidson cut-off t-shirt.

“Listen,” she started matter-of-factly, “I swear I wasn’t eavesdropping but judging from both of your faces I can safely assume this is the Jane-is-bi-curious conversation-“ Jane let out a groan and started to leave but Jessica held up a hand to pause her, diplomatic – “Let me finish this.” Sighing, Jessica caught another swig of her beer before resolving herself. “I am sorry if I made you feel shitty about your …situation, I guess, whatever but I’ve been thinking and if you really want to have sex with another woman whom you know and feel safe with, I’m up for the task.”

The bombshell landed in a moment of silence as Natasha’s mouth fell open just enough. She leaned forward to get a good look at both of their faces, Jessica’s eyebrows knit in curmudgeonly confusion over the quiet and Jane’s eyes wide in shock.

“I-…” Jane’s eyebrows knit and she screwed her mouth up into something almost regretful, wincing out her words softer and slower, “I mean… is maybe _Claire_ up for it or something?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Jessica screeched as Natasha burst out laughing, holding her stomach and clenching at the edge of the wall with her popsicle-hand to keep from falling off. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I…?” Jane shrugged apologetically, “I’m sorry, you’re just not really…um…”

“Oh man,” Natasha guffawed, eyes running tears and voice tight, “Ohh Jessica, oh fuck!”

“Whatever,” Jessica spat at the rim of her beer can, “See if I ever offer you a charity fingerblast again.”

“I mean, it means a lot that you offered?” Jane tried, and though her voice was still high and tense a giggle was beginning to break through, “Like, I really, really was not expecting that.”

“Whatever,” Jessica reiterated, and despite herself she almost laughed when she pointed at Jane, “You fucking ingrate. Remember the scissor sandwich you could have had when you’re jonesing for V.”

“I don’t think she’s going to be ‘Jonesing’ at all from the sounds of things,” Natasha barely got the sentence out before it was a rasp through hysterical laughter, nearly rocking off and into the sand below.

“Oh, that’s a pun foul,” Jane cackled, “And a foul pun.”

“Move!” Jessica barked at Jane, swatting out at Natasha’s sunburnt shoulder, “I’m gonna smack you right off this goddamn wall!”

When Thor looked back up at his girlfriend perched against the waning sky, he found three women laughing so hard they were swaying in the breeze, reaching for one another for balance, and smiled to himself.

***

Once the raffle was over and the vendors were packing it away, Natasha spotted College Boyfriend Matt Murdock from across the bonfire and thunder nearly rolled down her spine.

He was shirtless and wringing out a tank that was saturated with beer, laughing while Foggy talked next to him and held two cups. Every segment of his abdomen was just as pronounced as she remembered in college even though he’d thickened out some with age, not as boyish-lean but still stacked, ever the boxer. His arms flexed as he twisted the damp fabric and she felt a ripple of heat jolt straight to her clit as she remembered the way he pinned her down at the shoulders, how fast and hard he could drive two fingers into her with a machine’s relentless precision until she was coming all over his sheets, the desk, the wall they were up against. The sheer volume of sex she’d had with this man came flooding back to her as she felt herself go slick wet in a moment’s notice, shifting her legs to test the throb of her pussy against the fabric of her bikini bottom in her shorts.

Matt laughed harder, dimples appearing in the five o’clock shadow scattered over his jaw, and she chewed her lip reflexively. _Shit_. Shit shit shit, _shit shit shit shit._ Shit. This was happening. There was a power larger than herself yanking up every roadblock of her resistance as she watched him toss his shirt down, his sunglasses glinting red in the fire’s reflection. Suddenly he went still, his posture straightening to full height like a meerkat sensing a predatory bird and he turned his face straight in her direction. This was as close to locking eyes as they were going to get, but Natasha knew he sensed himself being stared at and he likely knew by who.

Judging by the smirk that spread into a smile, he absolutely knew. His full lips pulled into a grin and Natasha felt herself respond in kind. It was stupid. He couldn’t see her smiling. Maybe that was for the best.

He strode across the sand with all the confidence in the world as Foggy rolled his eyes, catching Natasha’s gaze long enough to wave before turning to make conversation elsewhere. She waved back before turning to receive Matt, marveling at the fire dancing light across his handsome face.

“You know how to throw a party,” he offered, holding out a hand palm-up.

Natasha knew what would happen the second she took his hand. Not only was this not her first rodeo with this particular man but she wasn’t stupid, touching someone with whom one has that kind of blistering chemistry is as good as snatching the lock off the door and letting whatever comes, come. She was turned on just watching him walk over, and he could utilize whatever swagger he had to his name but she knew him well enough to know he felt the same. She caught her reflection in his glasses, hair a blown mess and skin ruddy with a slight burn but otherwise ravishing in the way that firelight made possible. There was nothing stopping them, and no reason to stop. Fuck it.

It took twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of flirting by the fire, hands finding one another’s over and over in a constant dance of reaffirmation. Twenty minutes of beer from the coolers drunk slowly. Twenty minutes of pressing cold cans into each other’s hot skin for the laughs, for the jolt of adrenaline. Twenty minutes of dancing to Miguel on the loudspeaker before they were in the parking lot, then all over each other in an Uber, then in Matt’s apartment on the upper west side of the city.

Though it looked nothing like the college apartment Natasha remembered nearly every detail of it was breathtakingly similar – all the furniture set up in a clean, easily navigable pattern. No clutter, few personal possessions around a utilitarian living room that smelled like nice cologne. They carved a swath across the living room in a flurry of hands down shorts, lips on necks, sighs and groans and grunts against sensitive, pink skin. Matt worked deft fingers between the slick lips of Natasha’s cunt while he pressed her backwards towards the bedroom, finding her wet enough for no resistance whatsoever when he slid a middle finger up inside of her, making her clench hard as she rattled out a moan. Her head was swimming – they were barely buzzed at this point, in no way drunk enough to make consent an issue and by proxy also unable to blame any of their actions on alcohol.

Up, up, and away. _Here we fucking go_.

The beautiful thing is that much like with Steve and Bucky, there was no room to juxtapose Clint. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t even entered the forefront of her mind by the time Matt withdrew his hand and put her on her back on his big, soft bed. The sheets – silk, of course, someone with that much tactile awareness couldn’t abide by Target cotton if he tried – bunched up around her like pure decadence and the thought crosses her mind that the oil from her sunscreen will probably stain them but before she could think to say something, Matt was sucking his fingers clean and it was all she could do not to moan unabashedly at the sight itself.

Her favorite memories of fucking Matt were how his palms would glide across her skin, how his fingers sought out ever dip and curve and the architecture of her body was a map he studied like his life depended on it. Fat places, muscular places, places where the skin stretched thin over bone like her ankle or collarbone, he touched everything he could reach as he gave himself the most complete picture of Natasha he was ever going to get in this lifetime. Now, all these years later, she grinned in the dark as he slipped her sandals off and ran his hands across the soles of her feed, grinning back as his dark eyes fixed onto nothing, blinking soft and slow as his breathing steadied out into the deep cadence of building desire.

Up her legs, over the curve of her calves and the delicacy of her toes and ankles and the tops of her feet. Cupping over her knees, slipping up the backs of her thighs now dimpling with more cellulite as she got older despite their impressive musculature. Measuring the heft and width of her hips with a firm grip on either side. Curling underneath to get two full, soft handfuls of her ass, making him hiss out a breath as he pulled her closer, the bulge of his erection in his shorts brushing her soft inner thighs but Matt was above all things a patient man, always the patience of a saint. He wouldn’t so much as let her hands near his cock until he was done with the thrice-over he always loved to give her, his face soft and sweet in something like nostalgia as she watched him, her own breath coming harder and more ragged by the second round as he touched everywhere but where he’d been touching earlier, everywhere but where she was dying for some pressure.

“Fuck, Matt,” she whined, shifting in the sheets and all he did was hush her, sucking that swollen lower lip in between his teeth in rapt concentration as he curled his fingers delicately through her tangled hair, stopping to rub the ends between his thumb and forefinger, “It’s long, for you.”

The gentleness in his voice was almost too intimate, eliciting a response bordering on violent avoidance – danger, Will Robinson – as Natasha grabbed for his free hand and caught two fingers in her mouth, sucking the taste of lime-y beer and sea salt off them. He hissed again, bucking involuntarily until the hard column of his cock was pressed into the seam of her shorts and suddenly it was college all over again: Matt pressed against Natasha, rubbing his hard on against her jeans wherever they managed to get horizontal for a few minutes, the urgency of youth who ironically have nothing better to do than this coursing through them. He caught both of Natasha’s wrists and pinned them to the bed before grinding into her again, moaning a sound that pulled Nat straight back almost a decade before. With the strength he suspected she still very much so had, Natasha flipped them until Matt was arched on his own back, hands going quickly into her hair as she pulled down the front of his shorts, caught his impressively hard and memorably thick cock in her hand, and started swallowing it down inch by quick inch until he was nearly at the back of her throat.

It was delicious, a mainline of the best kind of memory. It was athletic in the way they both liked to fuck, with Matt on his knees and Nat flat on her back as he pistoned into her with slow but hard strokes or with her pulled up into his lap, bouncing with her hands braced on his shoulders while he buried his face in her tits, licking and sucking and biting at her nipples until they were flushed red and aching. They were barely at the halfway point of their limits when he pulled out, turned her over and ate her pussy and ass from behind with the same kind of fervor she remembered him having – goody two shoes Catholic boy loved anal-anything, go figure, spending plenty of time lapping at her clit before he was delving his tongue inside of her and moaning, first in her cunt and then in her ass.

The hesitation of all that time was gone and they spent the rest of the hours of consciousness they had left knocking the rust off each other, culminating in the two of them on the floor in a cascade of tangled sheets with Matt knocking back hard into her one, two, three more times before coming hard while Natasha still rode the waves of the last orgasm of the evening. Some things never change.

***

Judging by the fact that Natasha woke up bound in a twist of silk the two of them apparently made it back to bed before the sun and sex tandem knocked both their lights out for however long. Morning was in full swing when she opened her eyes to find Matt already out of bed, his perfect round ass passing by on its way to his adjacent bathroom; Natasha was up for round three or maybe four without a second thought to the consequences of anything but Matt’s hurried demeanor told her he probably had places to be. Lawyer and all. Not making the same mistake as before she’d already established that she would not be anywhere near work on the day after the barbeque, leaving the morning-after in Luke and Jessica’s capable hands.

 

Wandering barefoot into his kitchen, clad only in yesterday’s bikini and trying to ignore the burn of what would likely be a UTI due to her choice to fall asleep rather than pee post-sex, she took a casual stock of the living room in the sober daylight. Grey couch, looked comfortable enough. A few personal touches around but otherwise simplistic – a black leather chair that looked expensive, a flannel throw across the back of the couch, only a few framed photos on a slim table against a wall. Brushing her errant hair behind her ear, Natasha came over to give a quick inspection while she listened to the tap water run in the bathroom.

Natasha had seen this photo of Matt’s father many moons ago, smiling with a busted lip in his green boxing trunks and a pair of well-worn gloves. It was one of his few treasured possessions, this photo, and its presence didn’t surprise her. These photos weren’t for Matt himself after all – they were a window through which he could be viewed, a quick this-is-me for anyone inside of his house. On the right sat a photo of both himself and Foggy looking elated in front of the plaque of what she assumed was their first shared practice. Nelson and Murdock, Attorneys at Law. However, the middle photo pulled her attention the quickest – Matt smiling into a camera, his eyes obscured in dark red lenses, while a beautiful brown woman with long black hair slung her arms around his neck, her eyes shiny and dark, beautiful eyebrows plucked to aggressive arches.

It didn’t take much to assume. Either he was heartbroken enough to leave a photo up – no sign pointed to that – or she’d just slept with her college boyfriend that was now someone else’s boyfriend.

“If you’ll let me explain without making up your mind without me,” Matt offered out of nowhere, standing in the doorway to his bedroom, his voice resigned. Natasha turned to look at him somewhere between offended and surprised.

“Is there an easier conclusion to reach for? Occam’s razor, right?” her voice had dropped a few degrees into something cooler and she could feel her mouth tighten.

“She’s my girlfriend, but we’re…” he reached for the bridge of his nose but stopped, hands going back to his hips, “…we’re not in a good place right now, and we’re on a break, I guess.”

Any signs of trouble in paradise had been expressly missed by Natasha – had she really been so preoccupied with all the nostalgia that came with seeing Matt again that she missed some telltale signal, some glaring neon sign that pointed to “rebound” as the answer? Maybe she’d been tunnel vision-ed to a degree but there was no way in hell he was emitting breakup sadness without some trace element of –

“Are you lying to me?” Natasha couldn’t help but ask incredulously, almost unsure of the words coming out of her own mouth as she turned and faced him, “If you’re on a break, why not tell me about it? Why not mention her to me when we first met up for drinks?”

Both of Matt’s eyebrows shot up at the near accusation and his hands came up in surrender, but his tone caught a sharper edge – defensive. “I assume you didn’t immediately tell me about anyone you’re seeing for a reason, too? And don’t tell me you’re not. I stood next to a guy who made jokes about ‘Natasha’s two boyfriends’ for a good twenty minutes last night.”

 A little struck by the audacity as well as the admission, Natasha almost laughed before quickly spitting out, “I’m not exclusive with them or anyone else, and you’re right, I didn’t tell you about it because it wasn’t your business. Fuck, Matt, I never took you for a cheater.”

His mouth opened but he wisely bit back on whatever words were initially coming, tucking his chin down and taking a beat to regroup before his voice went back to a deliberate even keel, “I am telling you, right now, that I am not…” he paused, catching himself before the sentence could finish and sighing. The unsaid piece dangled in the air and Natasha could scarcely believe the entire thing – either he was telling the truth and she’d somehow not even bothered to notice he was troubled, or he’d put up such a good front that she had missed any falsehood on his part. The second part gave more credence to the idea that maybe, if Matt truly had been such a good liar, he was lying now. And why did that matter, really? It didn’t, except Natasha’s sense of pride about refusing to ever be “the other woman” without transparency wouldn’t let it go.

“She slept with someone else.”

Matt blurted it out, and Natasha exhaled. He began again, less sure of himself this time, “Her name is Elektra, she’s a consulate with the UN, and she slept with someone else. So, I’m still figuring this out, but we’re not together in the strict sense right now, no.”

There it was as plain as day – heartbreak. Of course Natasha had missed it; how could she see through the fog of her own or look away from the distractions that had helped her start sewing the hole closed? She had Steve and Bucky, new friends at her new job, and Matt was using her for the same purposes. After all this time, the two of them truly had not changed.

Her expression softening into something close to pity, Natasha chewed her lip for a moment before she dropped into the leather chair, elbows on her knees as she rolled her head for a moment, trying to process.

“I’m not lying,” he insisted, softer.

“I know,” she answered truthfully, believing him and a little ashamed of herself for not seeing any of this coming, “I’m sorry you got hurt.” A beat passed. It would have been easy to leave it there, keep her cards close to her chest and leave Matt hanging in the wind, exposed and ashamed. Though it wasn’t her first inclination to share, it did feel like the most merciful option.

“I, uh,” she started, rubbing the back of her neck before finally bringing her gaze back to his unfocused brown eyes, “I got hurt, too. Still trying to shake it off.”

A moment’s understanding passed between them as Matt nodded, processing his own thoughts on the matter. “Probably should have seen that coming, too. But you hide it well.”

“That’s probably a curse,” she admitted, sighing and gesturing back towards his bedroom as though it were for anyone’s benefit but her own, “This is weird but can I borrow a shirt? I wasn’t planning ahead when I word a bikini and shorts yesterday.”

Matt almost laughed, a smile pulling back across a jaw she still saw in her mind’s eye from time to time, the full beauty of his mouth and the way all his soft, round features made him seem so sweet, so harmless. No wonder he’d become a lawyer. No one ever saw Matt coming.

“Yeah, I’ll get you one.”

He did, just a plain white t-shirt – she couldn’t recall him wearing anything else under sweaters in the fall except maybe gray ones so this was on-brand for him – and then she was on her way, the question of seeing one another again still hanging in the air when she turned in his doorway and kissed him goodbye with something like empathy.

He was one half of the Salacious attorney team. It’s not like she could avoid him for long.

 

 


	8. Your Vag Is As Good As Mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _This was something like a normal life now. Her job was markedly different than the last one but fulfilling, though she did miss the sales floor often enough to make trips down and make a few sales here and there... The environment at work was stellar – so far there had been no major needs for staff changes, no drama, and no complaints except from Scott when Nat unilaterally refused to buy the gold-plated vibrator (“this is a travesty and if you cared about your coochie at all you would give it gold-plated toys, you strumpet” or something to the effect). The Clint box still lived at the top of the closet, unmolested and to be quite honest, un-thought of more often than not. Stasis._
> 
>  
> 
> __
> 
> _So when Natasha smelled Darcy’s perfume before she even saw her in the store it struck her somewhere between instant arousal and panic._
> 
>  
> 
> Enter stage left, Darcy Lewis, only ever present when big things happen.
> 
> And boy, are they ever about to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As posted on my tumblr - 
> 
> WARNING. 
> 
> We are soon going to be entering into what is sensitive territory for some, and while I will not be updating the tags or applying the warning fully until the next chapter to avoid spoilers, I just wanted to give y'all a head's up that this is coming. Tags and CW's will be updated as we progress. Also a reminder: there will never, ever, ever be sexual violence in present time in this story. Please do not worry. 
> 
> More on this next chapter. 
> 
> Thank you for all your well wishes - I'm still going on a full month of constant vertigo now but it is getting marginally better and I'm hopeful for continuing the pattern. 
> 
> <3  
> Noccalula

August in California was especially strange for a transplanted New Yorker. Back home, the temperatures might still be sweltering depending on the particular pattern of global warming that year, but there was a clear-cut sense that summer had a finite end that was rapidly approaching. Every popsicle on the stoop seemed sweeter, every trot through a spraying fire hydrant a reminder that the humidity on the skin might be uncomfortable but that it is, as all things, temporary. In New York, this would be the time to start wringing every last drop out of the summer’s last hurrah before it began to fade into autumn by September: wear every last pair of short shorts and every crop top, enjoy open-toed shoes (if they were walk friendly, anyway), and relish the ambience before it was but a distant memory. By September, the hottest days are behind you save the few last death throes before it’s hoodie weather and October is well on its way.

California? No sign that the party was slowing down except that the kids were getting ready to go back to school. Suddenly there were teenagers out with a ferocity and volume that Natasha hadn’t noticed before, trying to suck up the last bits of pre-academia freedom before it was back to homeroom and the regular routine. No one else seemed to be in any sort of a hurry though, and this was confusing as hell for someone who had never lived in such a moderate climate before. The coming fall and winter would be her first in a place that didn’t get cold, and the reality that no one around her was preparing for incoming seasonal change was Twilight Zone eerie.

Bucky and Steve had proven to be the greatest gift of all in this new frontier – orgasms for days, eye candy of the most delicious nature, and as the comfort zone between the three of them emerged, a consistent source of emotional safety, the softest spot for Natasha to land that she could have imagined would ever come from men. Drinks with Jessica and when they could swing it Claire and Jane were a more frequent occurrence now though her Skype dates with Maria and Wanda had wound down to virtually nothing. This was a point of guilt but she reminded herself that if anyone understood a busy schedule, it was Maria – after all, the clinic was looking at expanding to a new wing so they could double the space for surgical abortions. The silence between them wasn’t awkward, just busy; a few texts here and there, the occasional face to face that never really culminated in mutual masturbation anymore.  

Wanda? She had something going on that she wasn’t ready to tell anyone about, judging by how she was communicating with Nat solely via text anymore. She sent cute memes on Instagram and the occasional check-in text and that was more or less it. Tony hadn’t brought up any odd behavior again, only mentioning that Wanda had been long in getting over whatever bug she’d had and seemed more distant these days. Natasha suspected he wanted to nag her further, ask her for a full investigation into what was going on – Tony was both nosy that way and concerned for someone he did truly care about – but knew she had her plate full in California without worrying about New York.

Obvious changes in the seasons were such a steadfast comfort that it was almost jarring to be without them, and while on the last week of August every store on the block was hocking back-to-school gear and the barest inklings of Halloween décor – earlier and earlier every year – Natasha felt a little untethered without happy anticipation of breaking out the sweaters soon, pumpkin in every baked good she consumed or changing foliage, the crunch of newly fallen leaves on the sidewalk.

Soon everyone in New York would be enjoying pumpkin bread from the local market, the ever-ambivalent pumpkin spice latte, pumpkin and cream cheese muffins topped with toasted seeds. All the favorites. Tony’s sentimentality for autumn rivaled her own and he knew she would be missing it sorely sometime soon, so when a carefully arranged box came overnight, first-class through UPS, Natasha already knew what it was before even opening it. Her favorite market near the shop would already be making glazed pumpkin loafs, topped with toffee and toasted seeds, and the first time Tony brought one into the shop neither he nor Whitney even got a piece before Natasha had killed the entire thing over the course of one eight-hour day. Lunch be damned, she was adrift in pumpkin-y goodness and had zero time for anything else. She’d had a bellyache all night but relented nothing, smug in her victory and accepting of her fate.

Slicing through the packing tape with a kitchen knife, she carefully peeled back the flaps of the box to reveal it: a perfectly cellophaned cake, glistening with unmatched beauty and looking every bit as fresh and pristine as if it were in the shop window this very morning. A cooling pack or two were wedged into the sides of the box. The sultry aroma of the bread was so strong that even the cellophane didn’t stop it and Natasha took a deep, happy sniff of all that cinnamon and clove and pumpkin – wait, fuck, _no_ – and then turned to immediately vomit onto the kitchen floor, watery stomach acid splattering onto her feet.

***

Still feeling a little low from what was a few days of intermittent puking without apparent cause, Natasha finally took up Steve and Bucky on their offer of having her stay the night when her nausea had struck immediately post-coitus the night before. She had been on all fours, hands braced on the footboard while she took a hard pounding from Bucky whilst sucking Steve’s cock when the urge to vomit had come up so strong that she’d whipped him out of her mouth with near violent force. The ensuing gag hadn’t immediately caught Bucky’s attention as anything more than maybe a coming orgasm until Steve had almost yelled at him to stop, holding out a hand to stay him as he used the other to sweep back Nat’s hair.

“It’s this time of year,” Steve had assured her once he’d settled her up into the pillow nest at the head of the bed, Bucky bringing in a glass of water, “All sorts of stuff goes around when school kicks back up.”

“You miss a period?” Bucky asked and Natasha nearly rolled her eyes, taking a swig of water so cold it almost made her gag again. “IUD, I don’t usually get periods so no, not pregnant,” she sighed, rubbing her forehead once she sat the glass down.

Steve, official mom-friend, took the back of his hand off her forehead and shook his head, “You’re not feverish, so it’s not a virus. Did you eat something bad?”

“I don’t know, probably,” she groaned, trying to sit up straighter. Any degree of being sick was something she hated with a passion, but being sick in front of other people? Whole other ball game and one she hated infinitely more and with a greater fire. Time and time again she was reminded of her poor relationship with vulnerability and nowhere was it more pronounced than when she felt physically unable to keep her guard up.

But this was Steve and Bucky, two of the most nurturing people she’d ever met. The urge to steel back up was certainly still there but the gentleness in Steve’s cool-handed touch, the way Bucky fished out a t-shirt to pull over her head reminded her of who these people were at their core. They were good at taking care of each other, and that night, they were good at taking care of her.

Considerate to a fault, Steve waited until Natasha was safely asleep before dragging Bucky into the guest room to finish each other off; concern could have kept Steve from being distracted but nothing short of the roof caving in was going to cull Bucky.

Mid-morning the next day – Sunday, blessedly, with no one having to work – Natasha awoke, had some of Bucky’s electrolyte-heavy broth, and felt significantly better. Steve had suggested taking it easy for the rest of the day, maybe nixing any heavy physical activity but a combination of embarrassment over the night before and a need to regain footing by returning to something familiar made Natasha reach for his cock through his sweatpants. Giving her a look somewhere between disapproval and arousal, Steve left the ball in her court to decide how far anything went based on how well she felt.

In no time, she sat spread-legged at the edge of the bed with Steve beside her, both of them leaning back just enough to watch Bucky move from his cock to her cunt, back and forth as the mood suited him. He grinned dirty up at her as he shifted over, his hand still around Steve’s thick shaft and pumping lazily as he sucked her bare lips into his mouth, ran the plush of his tongue up and down her slit with his eyes on her face all the while. Steve hissed out a groan and reached over, palming the back of Bucky’s head to keep him face-deep in Natasha, murmuring low under his breath.

“Such a good boy,” Nat teased breathlessly, watching Steve lovingly finger through his hair, “On his knees, working hard.”

Bucky laughed into her, the sensation making her legs jump, before pulling away with a slick pop, “You think this is work?”

“Shut up,” Steve groaned, the head of his cock a bruised purple as Bucky worked that iron grip over him, pushing the back of his head until Bucky was eating her hungrily again.

Once Bucky had finished swallowing down Steve again, bobbing steady while Natasha kissed the other deeply and purred happy moans when he pushed his fingers into her, he slapped Nat’s thigh and gestured over at his husband, “Get on top of him.”

Not having to be asked twice, Nat climbed over Steve and let him catch her around the waist to haul the both of them further back onto the bed. Glancing down she noticed her nipples seemed darker somehow, maybe? Redder? She felt a little flushed, sure, but after a quick and alarmed self-check for nausea she blessedly found none. When Steve guided her down onto him and pulled her soft hips until he was buried, her perched atop him with her back arched and her mouth open, Bucky slipped behind her and cupped her tit in his hand, squeezing softly and making her wince just a little. Sore. Maybe her period was coming – great. Exactly what she needed on top of whatever this was.

“One at a time or both at once?” Bucky purred into her neck, kissing and nipping until Natasha could pull together an answer through the onslaught of sensation.

“Both,” she panted before leaning forward to brace her hands on Steve’s broad chest, the muscles beneath working in perfect rhythm as he slowly pulled her back and forth by the hips. Bucky lubed up – always a bottle somewhere in the sheets with them – and pressed slick fingers into her ass, the careful warm up before he felt confident in pushing his cock inside of her, the process less and less lengthy as time went on.

Blessedly, there was no more threat of illness. Steve held Natasha’s pale shoulders to help keep her steady while he thrust up into her in a perfect rhythm with Bucky, in on his withdrawal and out with his push in, as her eyes rolled back and she shuddered hard, pleading moans spilling from her mouth with every brush of Steve’s cock head against her cervix. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Her skin felt electric, twice as sensitive as usual, and when Steve slipped his big hands to cup and squeeze her breasts, the friction on her nipples made her come so hard she nearly shot Bucky back out.

“Come inside me,” she rasped, nails curling into Steve’s pecs.

“Which one?” he growled back, mouth slack as Bucky groaned low in her ear.

“Both of you.”

***

The summer was nearly over and stasis of some sort had been achieved. When Natasha had first arrived in her apartment in California and spent the entire first few days trying to move inanimate objects around until it felt like a place she actually lived, it had felt as though this would never stop being some sort of weird extended vacation that she only half wanted. It was hard not to tick down the days from when she had last seen Clint, even harder when the boxes of clothes and her few personal items were slit open and the insides smelled like her old apartment, Wanda and Pietro’s apartment now. Her lease would be coming up back in New York soon and the sublet would end but she was confident her old landlord would be willing to let the young couple stay, especially if Natasha – on time every month like clockwork – vouched for them. For a while she kept the delusion that she would go back and move back in once her time in California was all over; now it was becoming abundantly clear that she wasn’t going back in another three months.

One of her soft, overworn t-shirts had still smelled like Clint’s cologne and instead of burying her face in it and sobbing the way instinct dictated, she had wadded it up and shoved it into a dresser drawer until all her clothes smelled only like new IKEA furniture. She started burning incense. There were enough tethers between herself and her beloved New York City that no circumstance would ever take them away but the life she had left behind was gone now, a fond chunk of memory that had now been in the rearview too long to put it back together exactly the way it was.

Clint was not waiting in the old apartment. The old store was not missing her, even if she was missing it. Wanda was handling her new role beautifully, Tony slipping back and forth between coasts while he busily reinforced the growing brand’s fortitude in any way possible. Natasha had not only taken the ball and run with it here in California but she had excelled: her staff loved her, the monthly numbers came in higher than projected every month, and by all accounts they had a hit on their hands. To celebrate, she bought two new Lelo prostate massagers, the Hugo with a remote control, that she could use to torment Steve and Bucky from across the room and spent some time eyeing a new piece for herself. In all the hoopla of the past few months not to mention her increasing dependency on a Hitachi before actual meat made its way back into the picture, she hadn’t had much time to test out new toys. She had talked Jane into a Picobong for a first-time vibrator, a definite improvement over the twenty five dollar Spencer’s monstrosities that burned through AA batteries like fire before the engine gave out in four months that most curious young women ended up with.

Lelo had just launched a luxury line that included a seven thousand-dollar sterling silver vibe and a fifteen thousand-dollar gold-plated Inez massager and while there was no way in hell she would ever entertain the notion, it was certainly nice to joke about. Scott tore a picture from the catalogue and stuck it to the office board, circling it twice with a gold sharpie and writing HOLY GRAIL above it.

“Think about it,” he had said smugly as he pushed the cap back onto the pen, “We get one of these babies, put it in a glass case in the middle of the store, and we get to be in a robbery caper at least once a month.”

She finally settled on an Ora 2, either despite or because she was skeptical of oral sex simulation toys thanks to a line of previous experience with cheap ones, including one that was a rotating fan of soft “tongues” that would slap at her clit like some sort of x-rated Three Stooges comedy device. That damn thing had only proven good for laughs, Clint holding it up to his face and mimicking being forcefully slapped or wielding it as a weapon against her.

Most of the sex toy chest was still in storage. She doubted she’d be going through it anytime soon. The one Lelo she kept out and the poor overwrought Hitachi were doing a good enough job before she suddenly had regular sex again and now she had a third weapon in case she found herself bored and wanting.

This was something like a normal life now. Her job was markedly different than the last one but fulfilling, though she did miss the sales floor often enough to make trips down and make a few sales here and there. Though no one was tossing around any official labels yet and Natasha still hadn’t given them a solid answer regarding their offer, Steve and Bucky had become a regular routine that now often included dinner both at restaurants and in their home, where Nat was hesitant to admit she was getting cozier and cozier as time went on. Jessica was now the tier of friend who had crashed on her couch after one too many and Claire was getting there. Jane had stopped being standoffish with everyone. The environment at work was stellar – so far there had been no major needs for staff changes, no drama, and no complaints except from Scott when Nat unilaterally refused to buy the gold-plated vibrator (“this is a travesty and if you cared about your coochie at all you would give it gold-plated toys, you strumpet” or something to the effect). The box still lived at the top of the closet, unmolested and to be quite honest, un-thought of more often than not. Stasis.

So when Natasha smelled Darcy’s perfume before she even saw her in the store it struck her somewhere between instant arousal and panic.

Darcy, with the perfect curves and those viciously beautiful eyes and full lips. Darcy, who showed up and wrecked Natasha for anywhere between one to three nights before disappearing back into the night. Darcy, the arbiter of the shift, who only ever rode in on the wings of change. Tresor by Lancome now had a Pavlovian effect on both Natasha’s parasympathetic nervous system and pussy. Darcy threw Natasha for a loop every single time they got near one another, magnets pulling with all their might towards each other until one of them announced they were going to Florida to dance or some such and left the other still wet and wild-eyed, catching their breath and trying to figure out exactly what happened.

Natasha half hoped it was someone else wearing her perfume – god knows it wasn’t the first time she’d smelled it on someone and immediately whipped around, looking for the familiar figure to find nothing – and there was a pang of guilt at the realization. Of course she wanted to see Darcy. Of course she wanted to touch Darcy, desperately now that the possibility was dangling in front of her, but the still waters she was wading in at current press time had been hard-won and there was the ever present fear of the stripper’s radius-effect of chaos. Surely it was coincidental that Darcy only ever arrived on the doorstep during some major shift that Natasha usually only had half a notion was even occurring, but the association was forming solid and it took cognizant effort to fight it.

When she made it to the bottom of the stairs her heart nearly stopped as she stared at that perfect, round ass in the sexiest sundress positioned at the counter, elbows on the glass like usual, bending that charm all over a dumbstruck-looking Scott.

“Darcy?” Natasha asked, her throat dry.

Darcy straightened and looked over her shoulder, painted pink lips already in a that perpetual half-smirk, the bluest eyes flashing under those dark lashes, “Natasha?”

Just the sound of her voice made Nat’s knees feel a little loose and she moved toward her, watching as the dancer turned around to face her. Her hair seemed even longer now, hanging in beautiful unkempt waves, just the faintest flush of pink on her too-pale-for-California skin but she trotted over with that ever-familiar gait – pure confidence – and wrapped her arms around Natasha, pulling her in for a close hug. Her tits smooshed against Natasha’s still-oddly-sore breasts and the redhead winced only for a moment before melting into the proximity of Darcy’s so-soft body, arms going around her back as she took in Tresor in all its mixed delight.

Darcy pulled back enough to get a good look at Nat’s face, grinning wide and popping mint gum, “Look at you, oh my god. As soon as I saw the building I knew I had to come see you!”

“What are you doing here?” Natasha asked with pleasant shock, shaking her head as Darcy reached up to play with the ends of her hair, “I mean, California I guess but mostly just _here_?”

Darcy laughed, a musical sound that sent a swoon through both Natasha and from the looks of things, Scott as he stared on behind her, watching them with rapt fascination, “I come to California all the time! And when I was in Brownsville I went by your old store, your boss said you were running the west coast branch now. Congratulations, boss.”

Nat realized that her hands had moved to Darcy’s hips without any thought, Scott practically half-climbed over the counter behind them to stare.

“Thank you,” she almost-laughed, half bashful in the way that always came with proximity to someone so sexually incandescent. Darcy snagged one of her hands and kissed it, not a trace of lipstick left behind, wrapping it in both of her own and batting the black fringe of her lashes, “You look amazing, I’ve never seen you with a little sun on you or your hair so long.”

Pulling back to get a full picture shot again, Darcy appraised Natasha’s black linen slacks and purple shirt and when her eyes made it back to her face, the familiar hunger was alive and burning. There was a huge ego boost that came from knowing she was able to make someone like Darcy so hot given how she made Natasha feel like a teenager fumbling through a frantic backseat free-for-all before Mom and Dad caught them in the act; watching the pupils of her beautiful blue eyes dilate, the smile turn even more salacious than before, the way she tilted her head and just barely licked her lips all made Natasha lose her head. There was suddenly only one priority and while waking-mind Natasha fought tooth and nail against losing her restraint, the bulk of her remembered not only how sweet it felt to surrender but how inevitable it was, how rare it was to meet someone whose chemistry swept you so far away from shore that there was no choice but to swim or drown.

“Come up to my office,” she offered without preamble, and Darcy’s grin was all the answer she needed, “Scott, look after the store, I’ll be upstairs.” She paused, gesturing at Darcy as she turned back to grin at the dumbstruck Scott again with a little wave, “This is an old friend of mine, we’ll be catching up.”

If Natasha was gifted at nothing else it was keeping a straight face through all kinds of weather. Something in Scott’s responding eyebrow raise told her she might not have pulled this one off as seamlessly as she might have liked to give herself credit for.

“Alright,” she tugged at Darcy’s hand until they were on the stairs, Nat’s heartbeat loud in her ears until they disappeared into the office upstairs. When she reached for the door Natasha realized she’d never actually closed it before, the desk far enough away that any conference calls were heard loud and clear even above the din of music and voices in the store.

Darcy took a few steps forward in her stylish wedges, looking around from the sleek leather couch to the desk and the full-sized windows with the beautiful view of the ocean. She whistled, turning back to Natasha with her eyebrows up, “Moved up in the world, huh?”

The words were scarcely out of her mouth when Natasha was back on her, hands sweeping up her back as she kissed her so deeply it snatched the breath right out of her. Natasha moaned into the mint taste of her tongue, her plush lips, the softness of her underneath her hands as she twisted with Darcy’s sudden insistent push back to the couch. Nat dropped as gracefully onto it as she could as the shorter Darcy climbed into her lap, straddling her and immediately pressing her hips down, rolling them to grind against her. For a brief moment they were back in the strip club where they’d first hooked up, Natasha sprawled on questionable velveteen couch while Darcy gyrated right out of her reach, torment at its purest, the most forbidden fruit right up until she’d taken Natasha’s hands in her own and slid them up her thighs, her stomach, straight up to her full, bouncing breasts.

“Just like old times,” Darcy purred, her low voice a familiar stroke down her spine.

As though they had plenty of time, Darcy undid Natasha’s pants and slipped her hand down into the soft modal panties, rubbing for her clit with expert precision and grinning when Nat’s breath hitched, her back arching as she shivered. Darcy grinned, laughing soft when she carefully pressed two fingers inside of her cunt, ever-mindful of her own longish fingernails while the redhead pawed at her tits, pulled the front of her dress down to get handfuls of her softness and pinch at her pink nipples.

“You are _so_ wet, god. I bet you taste like the ocean now.”

Nat’s eyes cracked open and she laughed soft, buried beneath the hiss of Darcy withdrawing her fingers from her to bring them back up and examine. A slip of wetness split between two fingers, thin and clear and sticky enough to be pulled between her fingers as her eyes sparked devious curiosity.

Natasha nearly came from sight alone when Darcy sucked both of her fingers clean, moaning in satisfaction and locking their eyes for a long beat of throbbing pulses and aching cores until she grabbed her around her waist and pushed her onto her back. The dancer scarcely had time to rake her fingers into Natasha’s hair before she was between her legs, pushing up the floaty hem of her dress, finding her as bare as ever and burying her face in her slick, hot cunt.

The buildup had been so quick and hot that they both came relatively quickly, Darcy biting the back of her hand to keep from crying out loudly when Natasha swept her tongue just right over her clit, soft and careful of the silver ring she had forgotten she missed. When she pushed up the dress to get at Darcy’s tits it was almost an afterthought, having gone so fast straight into eating her out that all the usual pathways she enjoyed to the act itself had gotten lost in the wave. Darcy wasn’t quite so pointed in returning the favor, pulling Nat’s top off and tugging the cups down far enough to get her tits out, slipping to her knees on the floor - alas, only one of them had worn a dress – as she nuzzled into the soft flesh, laughing when Natasha hissed a little louder than expected.

“Sensitive?” Darcy asked teasingly but as she pulled back, her eyes widened in only the faintest register of surprise for someone so damn self-possessed, “Oh wow, your nipples are huge right now, you on the rag?”

Nat scoffed through all that lust and narrowed her eyes, “Thanks, and no.”

“Nothing to be shy about,” Darcy countered gently, licking softly along the engorged pink to prove her point, “Take your pants off.”

It took maybe five minutes of Darcy’s sweet, full lips working her cunt over before Natasha came with as stifled a moan as she could pull for privacy’s sake; the only reason it went on for five minutes was every ounce of willpower she could summon to keep from coming in the first forty five seconds. Her ears were burning, her face flushed, the tremors of her orgasm still shaking her thighs every so often when Darcy stood up and adjusted her dress, cocking her head just so as if inspecting her. Natasha cracked a small smile, wincing as she shifted the lace of her bra back over her tits.

“Y’know, between your tits and the consistency of your discharge-“

Natasha groaned, “Did you really try to use ‘discharge’ after having sex? Jesus h, Darcy, ick.”

Darcy swatted at her leg warmly and came to plop back beside her on the couch, though that look of curious seeking didn’t leave her face. Those eyes passed over Natasha’s hair, her face, back to her screaming-sore tits that the adrenaline high of an orgasm were no longer giving a free pass to.

“Are you pregnant?”

“No,” Natasha groaned, raking a hand back through her hair and getting really tired of the implication coming up more and more suddenly. Still, this was Darcy – not the most steadfast place to land but a good person to be raw with – and so she shook her head before continuing, starting to pull up her panties, “But I have been sick on and off, so I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“But you’ve taken a test?”

“I have an IUD,” Natasha nearly snapped, her patience on the matter getting thin as she turned to look at Darcy whose expression of curiosity had morphed into one of sudden, alarmed concern.

“Natasha… you know that if you’re having unprotected sex you can still get pregnant with an IUD in, right?”

 

 


	9. Straight From The Vag's Mouth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"It's not at all common, but it can happen."_
> 
> When three different little blue plus-signs bloomed onto the plastic sticks, Natasha had screamed in something like anguish. The constant cadence of “stupid, stupid, stupid” stuck between her ears and haunted her all the way from the office to CVS and then from CVS to home, where she insisted on taking three in rapid fire succession.
> 
>  _All positive._
> 
> Portrait of the protagonist, making choices. See notes for Content Warnings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CONTENT WARNING**
> 
> We are going to be talking about pregnancy, unplanned/unwanted pregnancy, and abortion in this chapter and in the next.  
>   
> 

## Shortly before graduation

 

_“I just don’t think it’s realistic to expect a college relationship to be viable out there in the real world.”_

_College Boyfriend Matt Murdock had his hands on his hips. He was making that face that Natasha knew meant he was doing his best not to cry, something he didn’t always succeed at. At first that had scared her but eventually she recognized that Matt’s rejection of the kind of emotionally-repressed male archetype was ahead of its time; she wouldn’t date another man who was unafraid to cry until she met Clint._

_Matt carefully metered his breath for a moment before starting up again, his voice shaking but resolute, “I don’t think you’re being very fair right now, Natasha, I don’t think you get to make that decision for both of us based on your own cynical comfort-blanket.”_

_Natasha wrinkled up her face in something between an eye roll and a wince, half irritated that he’d said something so dramatic and half irritated that she wasn’t totally sure she was right. Maybe it could work out, maybe they had the kind of thing that was built to last. At the end of the day the reality beneath it was stark and bare to her, even if it wasn’t for him – she didn’t want it to. This was done. The real world beyond the microcosm of college was tantalizingly full of uncertainty, something she didn’t used to be afraid of – through the lens of hindsight, she’d know this was something that didn’t set in for her until, coincidentally, her very late twenties._

_Matt was beautiful and wild beneath that well-polished exterior of Good Catholic Boy. He was fun and witty and smart and charming and so fucking attractive that the magnetic pull of their sexual chemistry had lured her back in over and over well past the point where she reckons they should have stopped. There was so much in Matt to be in love with, to fight with, to fuck._

_But Natasha missed women. She missed freedom and agency and owing no one explanations for her choices, and while Matt wasn’t the most demanding partner she’d ever had in those respects, he still expected the modicum of inclusion that constituted a monogamous relationship, something that young Natasha was very much so discovering was maybe not for her anymore._

_“I don’t want it to.”_

_The truth was ugly and sharp, and she knew it would hurt him. This was the only reason she’d waited this long to break it out, the hope that maybe there was some gentler way for them to both come to the same conclusion. The idea of him not wanting to be with her forever didn’t scare her or make her sad the way she thought it might; this was the last evidence she needed to rest her conviction on._

_Matt’s soft mouth opened but he stopped just as suddenly, whatever was on his tongue dying before it could be said aloud. The blow was struck; there was no un-striking it._

_Of course, this would not be the last time they were together. They would have sex a few more times leading up to graduation and once just past it, one last time for the road. It didn’t end with this bang, it ended with the whimper of Natasha quietly pulling her clothes back on while Matt laid silent, saying nothing except the soft goodbye he offered as she went for the door._

_Naturally, she hadn’t said a word. Natasha just left._

***

“It’s not at all common, but it can happen.”

When three different little blue plus-signs bloomed onto the plastic sticks, Natasha had screamed in something like anguish. The constant cadence of “stupid, stupid, stupid” stuck between her ears and haunted her all the way from the office to CVS and then from CVS to home, where she insisted on taking three in rapid fire succession.

All positive.

Darcy had insisted on coming with her, telling her that maybe she shouldn’t be alone with that kind of revelation and that she had experience in all of this and could help her sort through it. Natasha had flatly refused to the point of rudeness, mostly wanting to be left alone with this horrible feeling of having fucked up terribly in some irrevocable way. Darcy didn’t push, just scrawled a phone number onto a post-it and stuck it into Natasha’s pants pocket before planting a kiss on her cheek and waltzing out the exact same way she had waltzed in.

Connecting her to this moment, this big realization, made Natasha borderline resent her, something she knew wasn’t fair or at all logical but given the current circumstances, she hardly had the gumption to sort through the logic of anything, much less her own feelings.

When the third and final one came up positive and the third and final scream made its way out of her exhausted throat, Natasha slumped down with defeat against the wall of her bathroom and sobbed into her hands.

She was a grown up. An unplanned or unwanted pregnancy now was not the end of the world the way it was in high school but somehow she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was going to get in trouble as soon as someone found out, that there would be some dire sort of consequence for being so irresponsible and stupid.

But how irresponsible and stupid was she? She had done everything she thought she was supposed to do, from demanding bloodwork from fluid-bonded partners to regular testing for herself to using condoms even with an IUD, which she had thought was the ultimate dam against pregnancy.

Once the crying that she so bitterly resented subsided after a few minutes, she pulled her phone off the counter and did the only sensible thing she could think to do: call Maria.

“Are you fucking serious?” was the only thing she could provide at first until the sound of Natasha’s sniffling reminded her that yes, she was fucking serious, probably more fucking serious than she’d ever been with her, “I mean, I’ve heard of it, there was a post that went viral a few years ago about a baby being born holding a Mirena IUD?”

“I have Paraguard, I can’t use the hormonal ones,” Natasha muttered.

“I know that, I’m the one that set your appointment,” Maria nearly snapped but reeled it back into something more even-keeled, “I’m just…really surprised. You weren’t using condoms with this person, then?”

Natasha’s stomach flipped at the memory of how hot it had been to feel so raw and intimate with Steve and Bucky. It flipped again as she chastised herself for the thousandth time in not thinking to use one with Matt. This was not her MO – Natasha was methodically careful, left no loopholes for disaster as best she could.

“There’s three possibilities.” Maria made a noise that raised Natasha’s defenses and she nearly hissed into the phone, “Jesus, I’m _sorry_ , okay?!”

“You don’t owe me an apology, Natasha, fuck. _I’m_ sorry, I’m not trying to sound like I’m scolding you, I’m just…” Maria sighed, “Really surprised, I guess? This isn’t like you at all.”

“Fucking three men doesn’t sound like me?” Natasha deadpanned, pinching the bridge of her nose as a headache began to crawl its way around her head towards her eyes.

“Not without condoms, it fucking doesn’t,” Maria said but didn’t press further – this was not the time for lecture of any kind and truly she wasn’t trying to push for one, only the surprise at the entire situation was still being processed, “Listen, you need to see an actual doctor in person but there’s a few things you ought to know first.”

Natasha already knew what was coming from her frantic googling while in line at CVS. There had been a meme called Mirena Fail where an infant was holding the little plastic piece in her hand, apparently born with it in the placenta. Words like “uterine tear” and “extrusion” came up after that and she’d shut off her phone when her heart began pounding, knowing that continuing was only going to panic her and maybe needlessly.

“You can have a successful pregnancy with an IUD, but they have to monitor it very closely because of the risk of it poking through your uterus or damaging the placenta,” Maria began in as clinical a voice as Natasha had ever heard from her, “They advise taking it out if you’re going to attempt to bring the pregnancy to term, but removing the IUD? I don’t actually know what the statistic is but I do know that all three times I’ve seen a pregnant patient with an IUD get it removed, it has resulted in immediate miscarriage. So take your pick, really.”

Natasha stared at the pattern of the tile in the bathroom, that swanky subway-tile that was so fashionable these days, and contemplated her threshold for pain.

“Are you considering keeping the it?”

Natasha clicked her tongue against her teeth. She could only be called ambivalent on the subject of children in that she didn’t really think about it, her gut having always given her a pretty definitive lean in one direction on that matter. She liked to leave space for her feelings to change as age and circumstance dictated, but she knew herself.

This answer was not hard to give even before she heard the statistics on everything that could go wrong in this scenario.

“No.”

Maria almost hesitated, and Natasha could hear the effort to be ginger with her in her voice, “You sure? I mean, I figured you didn’t but you seem really torn up about this.”

“I just feel stupid.” It was the only answer she could give succinctly.

“I mean, I don’t know the situation, I wasn’t sure if maybe you had a boyfriend now or something?”

In any other scenario the passive-aggression in that statement might have made Natasha angry; however, Maria said it almost sadly and she couldn’t ignore the reality behind it. They really hadn’t been talking. Maria didn’t know about College Boyfriend Matt Murdock and his maybe-impeccable one-shot sperm or about the Steve-Bucky tandem. She was entirely in the dark save the occasional “I’m okay” and “how’s the weather back home?” and there was no place to put that blame except squarely back onto herself.

“Maria, I’m sorry. I’ve been so busy both with work and trying to build a social life out here that I stopped making an effort with you.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line before Maria spoke a little more warmly, “It’s okay, Nat, I was the one who kept urging you to go out, remember? I was just kind of sad. I miss my friend.”

“I miss you too,” Natasha said, half-thinking of Maria and half of Wanda. She really had let the distance grow wide, no matter what promises had been made before she left.

A beat passed.

“So, did he help you get over it?” Maria asked gently.

“It?” Natasha rubbed the back of her neck – it was ibuprofen time, this headache was coming on with the quickness now, “Which ‘he’?”

“Any of them. And Clint.”

Natasha considered for a moment, watching the offending row of blue and white plastic tests as though she could change the course of any of this now by staring hard enough. The image of Clint, the thought of him and their relationship seemed so far away from this moment in her bathroom in California, processing this mistake and how to get out of it. Honestly, she hadn’t thought of him all day, more so consumed with her surprise and tandem lust at Darcy and now with the reality of a pregnancy she didn’t want.

“Yeah. I think they did.”

***

Dr. Cho, who reminded Natasha of Maria in her calm, cool demeanor and slender, pale hands, sat across from her in an exam room at the local women’s clinic. A closed manila folder sat between them on the countertop, Natasha in her crunchy paper dress as she listened to every word.

“Now, based on the ultrasound you’re almost nine weeks, just barely too far along for the medication, and there’s the matter of the IUD,” she offered succinctly, making Natasha feel calmer just by being near her, “You can remove it and we can see what happens, but if the removal doesn’t trigger a miscarriage and you still want to terminate the pregnancy, you’re going to need what’s called a D and E procedure.”

“I’m familiar,” Natasha interjected and gestured vaguely behind her to whatever direction she assumed New York was in, “Friend of mine is a clinic manager for Planned Parenthood.”

Dr. Cho near-smiled, possessing a face that much like Natasha’s own didn’t give away too much on first impression, and gestured at the examination table, “I’ll spare you the whole speech then except to say that California has fewer restrictions and laws than most states in this matter. If you were doing this in Florida or elsewhere you’d be mandated to view the ultrasound or listen to a heartbeat.”

Natasha contemplated the immense cruelty in that. Nobody wanted to be in this stupid dress, on this stupid table because it was light-hearted fun. Once the immediate panic had subsided and she felt more like herself, her original choice had seemed like the only obvious, logical one to reach for. She didn’t feel bad about not wanting to be pregnant; she felt bad about having been pregnant to begin with.

“That said,” Dr. Cho continued, tapping her short nails on the side of the folder, “If you would like to see it, you can, but you certainly don’t have to.”

The corner of the folder poked over the edge of the counter and Natasha eyed it with something like resolution. Whatever was in there, any blip on a grainy black and white photo of her womb, it wasn’t going to change her mind. Sure, there was the rosy fantasy of raising a baby with two men who loved and supported her – she wouldn’t let herself think about Matt, not when she strongly suspected what his very Catholic ass would have to say about all of this – but that was a fantasy, albeit a pretty one. Reality dictated a need for freedom. Reality meant that if this fantasy ever became so beloved that she needed to make it real, it would require planning and talking and building, not having her hand forced by an accident she hadn’t anticipated.

Natasha picked up the folder without preamble and flipped it open, settling her vision on a blurry bean in an oval of grey and black and white, a solid white t-shape off to the side. Bigger than she had thought but still amorphous, still not yet a thing. Relief flooded through her when she realized that no, she had not changed her mind.

She closed the folder and handed it back, “Can we take out the IUD today?”

Dr. Cho stood, nodding and reaching for a box of blue gloves, “We can. This will at least get you on the path, we can schedule the rest when we see what happens here.”

***

Steve and Bucky had only let Natasha blow them off twice in two days before the eventual text came.

_Are you okay?_ And then eventually, _Did we do something wrong?_

The last forty-eight hours had been spent monitoring closely for any signs that a miscarriage was coming and Natasha half hoped for one if only to spare herself the money and the trip. She’d cramped something fierce for the first night – not uncommon in early pregnancy, nor with IUD removal – but nothing beyond a spot or two of faded blood ever presented. It had been a cough and a small pop and the damn traitor was out of her body, laying in a metal tray on the table beside her as she stared it down. Birth control was supposed to be 97% effective – go figure she’d be in the three-percentile who experienced its failure. Further, go figure it was someone she had only recently opted to have unprotected sex with and not the boyfriend she had been fluid-bonded with for nearly a year.

The odds were one in three on the culprit, tipped in Steve and Bucky’s favor purely on majority odds but considering it had been sometime around the week of the Fourth of July, Matt was not ruled out.

When it became clear a procedure was going to be necessary, Natasha finally let herself begin to worry about the other parts of the equation, namely whether or not to tell anyone. “Anyone” constituted several groups – the closest friends who weren’t Maria (Tony, the more-distant but still beloved Wanda, somehow the urge to reach out to Clint still came up), the co-workers and friends from work who might want to know why their fearless leader had suddenly needed to disappear (there was no way she was going straight back to work, her famed work ethic be damned) and of course the partners who might have been half responsible for the situation.

Neither Steve nor Bucky had ever brought up children in their future but she half suspected that was out of a fear of running her off too fast. They’d made their intentions clear enough in that they wanted a full-time third partner but even that had been done with such ginger care as to ensure it didn’t send Natasha screaming for the hills that she doubted they’d even considered talking to her about child-rearing plans. It seemed easier not to tell them and just come up with something else – _I’ve been sick_ would have flown fine since they knew that anyway, but it was surely an invitation to bring Steve over with soup in an instant.

While the urge to get rid of them was barely enough to be an urge at all, it was still there. And what might do that better than the truth?

One relenting text message and a full day of forcing normalcy at work later, Steve and Bucky were sitting in her living room while she curled up on the couch and waited on a reaction. She’d spent enough time now to know that Steve’s first reaction would be to put his hand over his mouth and there it stayed, his brow knit in silent contemplation. Bucky finally had the near permanent smirk wiped off his face as he stared at her, gobsmacked; even though she’d looked at his face a hundred times, Natasha only now noticed just how blue his eyes were. Greener than Steve’s but still blue and sharp, all those gears constantly moving behind them at a sudden screeching halt.

“I…” Steve began, scrubbing the hand over his mouth down his jaw and still blinking like the world was rocking, “Thank you for telling us, y’know? I wouldn’t have blamed you if you didn’t.”

“I thought about it,” she admitted, shifting and picking at the hem of her yoga pants, “But I’ve been more intimate with you two than I have with anybody else in a while and I don’t want any lies by omission in the picture.”

“Thank you,” Bucky also echoed, his voice a little hollow before he cleared his throat and raised his eyes back to hers, brows furrowed, “Did you think we wouldn’t support you?”

“Buck,” Steve started gently but didn’t interrupt him again.

“No, this is important,” he urged, more serious than she’d ever seen him but not angry, not accusatory, “I want to be sure you didn’t think we were going to pressure you into anything one way or another. That’s not who we are and that’s not what we want to put out there.”

“You didn’t,” she assured, and it was true. “I would have just not told you if I thought you were going to fight me one way or another on it.”

“We aren’t,” Steve reaffirmed, his hand reaching for Bucky’s to squeeze it softly while the other sat still on his thigh, “We wouldn’t.”

“I mean, what are the fucking odds, right?” Bucky almost laughed in disbelief, letting Steve have his hand but clearly still occupied elsewhere, “That’s got to be rare.”

“It is.”

Nat was watching them both carefully for any signs that this might go pear-shaped, someone might get angry or sad. She had been equipped for them to be startled and accepting; she hadn’t prepared a reaction in case of any other emotion. This felt like something near negligence on her part considering how she didn’t like to walk into anything without an exit plan but she was pregnant so hey, what was the worst that could happen if she played fast and loose now? Would Matt kick in her door and demand to raise a baby together after years of no contact? If Steve and Bucky decided they couldn’t see her anymore, best to get that over with as soon as possible before she was any more vulnerable.

Steve watched the side of Bucky’s face for a moment but turned his attention back to Natasha, those long blonde lashes over his too-honest eyes almost painful to look at. “Natasha, we want kids. We want a family. Eventually. But not until we’ve had time to settle in with our partner, really just be _in_ that relationship for a while. Not without planning and careful choices and, I don’t know, me reading every book I can get my hands on.”

He shook his head and Nat watched him, a sense of relief uncoiling in her chest.

“We would never tell you that you had to or that you couldn’t, and we’d have been there if you’d chosen something different,” he seemed to find the words he was groping for, speaking with more confidence now, “But we feel the same way you do, for this time, right now. Not that you needed our approval, but you’ve got it regardless.”

Natasha hadn’t intended to cry. She blamed the hormones and not the relief when her eyes got misty and Steve reached to take her hand, bringing her back into the loop of the three of them.

“Let us pay for it,” Bucky said suddenly.

“Absolutely not.”

“Natasha, please,” Steve asked softly, “I know you said you were on the fence about telling Matt, I don’t want you to depend on someone you can’t fully trust with something like this for support. Let us take care of you, you can some stay with us at the house and we’ll feed you great food and watch shitty movies every night.”

“I have my own money,” Natasha asserted with no small amount of gratitude in that reality, god knows this had not been her whole life, “And I appreciate that, but…”

She looked from Bucky to Steve, no small amount of gratitude in that either, and let herself say what she’d been thinking since the first test turned blue.

“…I need to go home for this.”

***

“Tony, it’s me, can you call me back when you get a minute?”

Natasha pressed END, put her feet up on the railing of her porch and watched the rain dry on the leaves of the many plants her neighbor insisted on keeping in huge terracotta pots. She had to admit, they were beautiful. This whole place was. The rain made it seem somehow quieter outside, not so many people bustling along their street on their way to the beach or the stores nearby.

The phone began to vibrate in her lap again. Tony.

“Hey.”

“Sorry Nat, was on the other line, is everything okay? You’re a goddamn millennial, I have to call you, you never call me.”

While the nervousness in her gut still hadn’t vanished, her appointment with Dr. Cho had brought it back to something more normal. This entire crisis seemed more manageable now, one major appointment out of the way and another, scheduled through Maria, that she could point to on her calendar and know that then, on that day, she would no longer be pregnant. This would be over and her life would be her own again, not hijacked by a freak occurrence and an idea that she just wasn’t ready to change anything for.

“I’m pregnant, and I need to come back home to have an abortion. I want to do it at Maria’s clinic.”

There was silence on the other line for only a moment before Tony spoke again, his voice low in the way it only went when he was about to abandon joke-making.

“You’re not pulling my leg?”

Natasha couldn’t help but smile weakly, “Afraid not. This would be a really shitty prank, wouldn’t it?”

“You might be surprised at what other people think is funny,” he said flatly before his voice softened again, “Have you already seen a doctor?”

“I did, and it’s a long story that I’ll tell you when I see you but for now I just needed to tell you that I’m booking a flight home. I only need a week but-“

“You’ll take two, and however long you need after that,” he interrupted, resolutely, “And _you’re_ not booking a flight, _I’m_ booking you one right now. When do you want to leave?”

For the second time in a twenty-four hour span she felt the threat of tears prick at her eyes in sheer gratitude for the family she had cultivated for herself.

“Tomorrow night, I’ve got a few things to attend to at work tomorrow but then I’ll be good to go.”

“Alright, I’ll send you an itinerary, and I’ll be picking you up at JFK,” Tony rattled off, ever detail oriented, “You can stay here with me or I can get you a hotel, it’s your call but I’d prefer you weren’t alone.”

“We’ll figure it out tomorrow. I’m exhausted, I’m gonna get a nap.”

Honestly, Natasha had never been so tired in all her life. The process of creating another human being was exhausting, somehow even more so when she knew it was for nothing.

“Get some sleep, and drink plenty of water, you’re gonna need it,” Tony offered, then followed up with a casual, “Not my first abortion, kiddo.”

“It is mine,” she sighed, shifting back to her feet, “So I’ll take whatever advice you’ve got from the lens of experience.”

“All I can tell you is that I’m gonna be here. You’re not alone, we’ll get you out the other side of it, okay? Go get a nap and I’ll see you…shit, soon.”

“I cannot imagine my life without you,” Natasha said softly.

“Don’t. It’s ugly. Oh, and do you want me to tell Wanda you’re coming home?”

Natasha paused, taking in the scope of the situation. She’d encountered nothing but support so far but that didn’t mean this was going to be a popular decision with everyone, and though she knew from her career choice alone that Wanda wasn’t evangelical by any stretch, she also didn’t know enough about her ideologically to make that guess.

“Yeah. Just don’t tell her why.”

***

Sitting in her office, Natasha ran down her hand-written post-it check list one more time before it was time to go. Her carry-on suitcase stood by the door, her bag on the leather couch that had been wiped down dutifully the day after her tryst with Darcy. Usually Natasha tried to dress at least somewhat business casual in the office but today was different; she hadn’t come in to be seen or to function in her actual capacity, only to meet with the staff and do some last-minute things before she would be gone for a time indeterminate, though surely short. Jessica could run the place competently in a short stead but by month’s end there would be all sorts of things Natasha had to do, reports to file on monthly numbers, major orders to place.

The meeting went well despite the presence of both Scott and Jessica, usually a recipe for asshattery but today they both seemed grounded by Natasha’s appearance. No makeup, hair brushed but messy, leggings and a drape-y shirt that would hopefully hide what had become the slightest swell of her stomach, no more than very bad bloating on a particularly rough period but enough that she could tell a difference. All eyes were on her when she explained succinctly that she had a sudden health emergency and needed to go back to New York to see her preferred doctor, everyone wearing their concern on their faces even after she reassured them that no, it was not cancer and yes, she was going to be okay (Scott bit back the question he was dying to ask about breast implants and everyone was grateful for it).

Only Jessica and Claire lingered once she dismissed the meeting, giving her two knowing looks of sympathy as everyone insisted on hugging her. Wincing at the contact with her breasts, she looked over at the two of them and knew that they knew.

Nat hadn’t noticed the date until she sat down at her computer that morning. It was September 3rd. August was officially over and she hadn’t even noticed. Her birthday was coming soon.

The big 3-0.

Jessica stuck her head in the cracked door, “You ready, boss?”

“Yeah, just one last thing,” Natasha responded without looking up, firing off a quick text message to the number on the post-it note.

_Darcy – I’m so sorry I was such an asshole to you. I got freaked out. You were right, I’m pregnant and I’m going home to take care of it. I wish I had taken the time to tell you how good it was to see you again. I’m sorry._

In Jessica’s truck and well on the way to the airport, Natasha’s phone vibrated again.

_I get it. I’ve been there too. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help and it was great to see you again too._

Biting her lip, Natasha took a long moment to consider before resolving to one last message before Jessica dropped her at the entrance for departing flights with a hug and an extra pack of Twizzlers for the flight.

_Actually, there is. I have a friend who is bi-curious and wants to try girls. She works at the shop, her name is Jane, and she’s coming in at 6pm tomorrow._

 


	10. Drastic Times Call For Drastic Vags

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You were careful,” he pointed out, “Far be it from me to give you life advice but I’d caution you against that kind of thinking, kid. Shit happens. You’re not infallible.”_
> 
>  
> 
> _“Oh, I’m not?” she echoed back in a stab at a joke that fell flat._
> 
> _“Nobody’s saying you can’t be upset, this is a shitty, inconvenient thing and for some people it’s a hard choice,” Tony pointed out mindfully, “But it doesn’t have to be for everyone, and if you’re feeling guilty about that, cut that shit out right now.”_
> 
> _There was a touch of that inside of all of this, sure – Natasha prided herself on being someone who didn’t make obvious mistakes but in light of what a shitshow her swing-and-a-miss at Clint turned out to be, she was no longer as rock solid in that concept of her own identity. Nat would never have talked down to a friend about having an abortion, whether that friend was solidly sure or not about their life choices; she’d be supportive and kind and understanding. What was so hard about extending that to herself?_
> 
> Hang on, we're goin' home.  
>  **CW: Abortion, unwanted pregnancy**

During her nap in First Class seating, Natasha dreamed about trying to catch a fish in a puddle. Both of her hands would close as quickly as they could around the thing’s slippery orange body but it was never fast enough, it always swam away. She awoke frustrated and with a dry mouth, taking down half a water bottle as she watched New York City get bigger and bigger all those miles below. It was rapidly approaching three am and there was no better time for quiet reflection than this, miles above the microcosm of her own life and the infinite crossing points in the city. Somewhere down there Tony was making his way to JFK, Wanda was probably still acting weird and summer was actually ending.

Natasha couldn’t lie; half of the urge to fly out had been to be somewhere comforting and familiar when all of this went down, and she could think of nothing more comforting than the beginning of a season change in New York.

With the in-flight fleece blanket pulled up around her, she rested her cheek against the glass and closed her eyes again, dozing just enough to see the orange fish just out of the grasp of her quick fingers, the swish of its tail curling effervescent around them as if to tease, to remind that she just wasn’t fast enough.

Natasha had expected Tony to be waiting in the car at the pickup line. Maybe he’d even send a driver for her given the wee-morning hour, though she doubted it and erred to the first probability more than anything. However, when she finally made her way out of the terminal with sleep-heavy limbs dragging herself and her rolling suitcase along the path, she spotted him leaning against the railing by the escalator with his hands in his pockets and a tired, blank expression on his face.

Too tired to call out to him the way she wanted to, she came up close before his attention moved back up and they saw each other, the two of them equally exhausted. His dark eyes softened in that way she only saw every so often and without more than a “hey”, he stood and embraced her. The casual touch was almost jarring at first but Natasha melted into it faster than even she realized, sighing at the comfort of his cologne and his steadfast, protective hold on her.

Neither of them spoke. They just held one another near the arrivals gate, and Natasha was grateful for the quiet.

***

The diner where Nat and Tony had always held their check-in meetings was a welcome blast of familiarity. Even their old booth was open by the time they arrived late in the morning, Natasha having slept like the dead in Tony’s guest room until nearly eleven.

“I’m not sad about it,” Natasha offered, scraping her fork over her barely-touched hash browns.

“Good. You don’t have to be.” Tony shoveled a piece of toast laden with eggs into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully before adding, “You know this is a choice a lot of people make with no tragic fanfare, no matter what the TV tells you.”

“I just…” she started then stopped, sighing and shaking her head as the waitress offered her more coffee, “…I feel like an idiot, y’know? This isn’t a mistake someone my age makes. This isn’t a mistake someone as _careful_ as me makes.”

“You were careful,” he pointed out, “But that shit is never more than what, ninety-seven percent effective anyway? That’s not your fault. This happens to plenty of people, careful or no.” He paused, setting his toast down, “And far be it from me to give you life advice but I’d caution you against that kind of thinking, kid. Shit happens. You’re not infallible.”

“Oh, I’m not?” she echoed back in a stab at a joke but it fell flat. Nat shook her head, tapping her nails along her mug, “I know that, I know. I know I’m being an asshole about this.”

“Nobody’s saying you can’t be upset, this is a shitty, inconvenient thing and for some people it’s a hard choice,” Tony pointed out mindfully, still giving her those soft eyes from the airport, “But it doesn’t have to be for everyone, and if you’re feeling guilty about that, cut that shit out right now.”

Nat bit her lip. There was a touch of that inside of all of this, sure – Natasha prided herself on being someone who didn’t make obvious mistakes but in light of what a shitshow her swing-and-a-miss at Clint turned out to be, she was no longer as rock solid in that concept of her own identity. Natasha would never have talked down to a friend about having an abortion, whether that friend was solidly sure or not about their life choices; she’d be supportive and kind and understanding. What was so hard about extending that to herself?

“You’re right,” she said softly, voice still sleep-hoarse until she cleared it, “As usual.”

“As usual,” Tony confirmed with a smirk, polishing off his toast before sweeping his hand off on his napkin, his tone shifting, “Now, do you want to stay with me for follow up? I’d rather you not be alone and Claudia’s going to be in and out this week so you might see her but you might not. And don’t even start with me about ‘not getting in the way’, you know better.”

A smile pulled gently at Natasha, “Yeah, I do know better. Sure, Tony. I’ll stay with you.”

“Cool. Now that that’s settled, we need to swing by our store on our way back and then I can get you to your check-in appointment, easy peasy. There anything else you especially want to do?”

“Not yet, but I promise once this is over we can make a week of it at all the old stomping grounds.”

“If you feel up for it,” he stipulated, pointing at her yet again, “Let’s not push.”

The response came up lightning quick and Natasha almost felt bad for it but not enough to not share. “Is it wrong that I almost said ‘that’s the point of all this, not doing any pushing?’”

Tony nearly choked on his water, cheeks going red as he snagged a napkin to hold to his mouth. Watching him bust up made Natasha laugh until she couldn’t breathe, both of them flushed and teary-eyed with the ridiculousness of it all by the time the waitress came with water refills and the check.

“Oh kid,” Tony wheezed, swatting his napkin at the table as tears dried in his crow’s feet, “Wrong. Too soon.”

“Hey, gallows humor,” Natasha offered, and much to her relief, without any guilt on the matter, “And I’m the one on the gallows so I can say this shit.”

***

If the diner was a quick hit of nostalgia, the Brownsville store was like drowning in it.

The interior looked virtually the same aside from some switch-ups on the stand formations. Tony had been talking plenty of shit about an overhaul to give the two stores a more synchronistic look, though she wasn’t sure how he’d pull that off. All the white plastic and clean lines of SWC were part and parcel with the California look; New York’s stores still featured enough exposed brick and industrial flair to remember exactly where it had come from. It was a great idea but the notion of these changes made Natasha’s heart sink ever so slightly – she had loved her shitty porn shop environment, it had been home back when ‘home’ was still a nebulous concept.

The leopard carpet had been freshly shampooed but otherwise was just as well-worn as it had always been, a point of contingency with Tony who hated it and Natasha who couldn’t help but love it. The lighting was marginally better since his last upgrade but she had been there for that, unbothered by the change from years’ worth of memory of a shitty yellow cast underneath florescent beams.

Looking around, there was still the possibility of entertaining of the fantasy that time had halted in New York when she left. She knew that it hadn’t - it was marching on without her, the store changing and evolving the way stores that want to survive do, and this was no longer her castle, her home domain, no matter how much it felt like it.

It was Wanda’s.

“Honey, we’re home! Come see what I’ve got!” Tony called upon entering, and across the store Natasha heard the hurried shoving of something in plastic clam-shell packaging being thrust back onto the shelf before footsteps came fast around the partition.

Wanda looked…different, somehow. She’d put on just the slightest bit of weight, her hips and cheeks just a little bit wider in a way she might not have detected if she’d watched it happen slowly instead of being gone for three months. Skype hadn’t been detailed enough for her to notice this and even then, it had been a good month since she’d looked at Wanda directly and not the contact photo in her phone. Her shiny dark hair still hung so low it was almost at her hips, looking a little thicker than she remembered.

If the scoop-neck shirt she was wearing was any indication, there was certainly more of a rack there than when Natasha left.

Wanda’s dark eyes lit up and she keened in something like relief, nearly running over and slinging her arms around Natasha fiercely.

“Oh, I missed you,” she laughed into Nat’s shoulder while she sighed like she’d been holding a breath, “Let me look at you!”

Natasha, feeling better after breakfast with Tony, smiled at her warmly and stroked her hands over Wanda’s hair, “Ugh, I missed you too, you look so good!”

Wanda smiled back, all white teeth and dark lipstick and it was so much like home that Natasha could have cried, “Your hair, it’s gotten so long!”

“Everyone keeps saying that,” Natasha raked a hand through it almost nervously as she’d barely dragged a brush through it, much less done anything else. 

“And you have a tan,” Wanda pressed a thumb softly into the ever-pink of Natasha’s chest and almost frowned, watching the white mark fade back rosy, “Of sorts, anyway. Come, come.”

Tony’s office was still a hot mess, offering up something like comfort at the memory of his piles of paperwork precariously placed all over filing cabinets. Nat and Wanda passed by the door where he leaned over his desk, phone against his ear as he jotted something down. Whether Natasha was in town or not, business wasn’t halting for anyone apparently. A clerk Natasha didn’t recognize was tagging boxes of DVD’s and Wanda called for a quick request to watch the front, not waiting for a response before she and Nat were out in the back of the store on the back steps, where so many of their most important talks had happened. This is where Wanda had finally broken down and told Natasha the truth about Pietro, for one thing. These steps were kind of hallowed in Natasha’s mental Hall of Friendship.

“Now then,” Wanda plopped her burgundy-pants ass down, her hand still in Natasha’s, “You’ve got to tell me what’s going on. Tony just said you were coming back, is everything alright?”

This had been a conundrum that Natasha had spent some time mulling in her waking periods on the plane: to lie or not to lie. Wanda’s personal feelings on the matter were her own but Nat couldn’t deny that any reaction of disgust or anger would be an axe wound in their friendship. That said, she was also attempting to trust that her friend would be lenient even if her ideology didn’t support her current choices purely based on their bond, even if the odds of that were precarious at best. Even if this were the case, how close can you be with someone with whom you disagree on something so fundamental as your bodily rights? The crucifix Wanda occasionally wore could have just been a faux-goth affectation, or it could be proof positive of a core-value conflict between the two of them.

It seemed risky to tell her the truth. It also seemed shitty to lie to her.

There was in fact a middle ground, and it banked on Wanda knowing very little about pregnancy and IUD’s, something Natasha was hoping was the case given how little she herself had known in hindsight.

“I, uh,” Natasha let Wanda take her hands and twine them in her own, the two of them leaned together on the stoop just like old times, “I don’t want to upset you if this isn’t something you’re okay with.”

“I think I already know,” Wanda said gently, not taking her hands away.

Natasha hesitated for a moment, but she told her the truth.

Though Wanda hadn’t said anything in objection, she didn’t offer the kind of warmth that Tony and virtually everyone else had answered with either. It took Natasha a moment to notice but Wanda had trouble meeting her eyes, pulling her own hands gently back into her lap while making what looked like a very concerted effort to not seem withdrawn. Tony had been right, there was something going on, and maybe between whatever that thing was and this news she suddenly couldn’t find herself opening up to Natasha the way she once had. The thought hurt.

When Wanda suggested they should go back inside, Natasha didn’t argue. Plans were made to get together as soon as Natasha felt up to it and while those did not feel forced, there was still an invisible wedge between herself and Wanda that gnawed at her quietly.

“You’re right,” Natasha said to Tony as she fastened her seatbelt, “Something is going on with Wanda.”

***

Because of internal policy, Planned Parenthood couldn’t accept proof of pregnancies and other confirmation testing from out of state. This meant that Natasha had to do an entire second round of the original routine – a positive test, confirmation ultrasound with measurements for gestation accuracy, and consents and releases signed. Fortunately this went quickly – perhaps the clinic director Maria had put the lead down on getting her in but she assured Natasha that this process moved quickly for most patients, the actual appointment being the longest of all but not by much.

Once all of this had been completed, there was nothing to do but wait until the next day’s appointment to not be pregnant any longer.

Tony had insisted on taking Nat out to dinner alone, assuring that he’d take her and Wanda out on the town to wherever they wanted to go once Natasha felt up to the adventure but in the meantime, she suspected, trying to buffer her with as much support as possible. Dinner was at a four-star high rise, the steak and scallions blessedly staying down given the price she didn’t even need to see to know all about, and by the evening’s end she was on the balcony of Tony’s Williamsburg loft, watching the sunset as best she could see it and the hustle and bustle of the city below with a bottle of Evian in her hand (“You’re gonna die first when the revolution comes, Tony you rich bastard” “Don’t worry, I’m going to take a steak knife to an investment banker to prove my worth, the proletariat will let me join if I turncoat with enough blood”).

The city smelled, looked and sounded nothing like California. It seemed odd that not even forty eight hours before this she was sitting on the opposite coast of the country, her feet getting wet as it rained on her neighbor’s plants as she took in the salty air. It truly was apples and oranges and much to her own surprise, she did miss her apartment a little. It was a life there, to be sure – maybe not her favorite one yet, maybe not the best version of it she could have seen for herself but it was a good one and she had built it with her own two hands. Financial stability allowed her to have the time to mull whether or not she was happy in the grandest scheme, not to mention insurance and security.

She hadn’t always had these things. She remembered to stay grateful for them, to try to see how to use it to get other people into the same position. Best to survive while hurting as few people as possible.

There was no spark of awareness, no sensation that she was carrying a living thing within her. It was still just so much growing tissue, a viable possibility but not an eventuality. Not for her. At the very least, not now. Her body still felt hijacked, her tits swollen and sore and her abdomen bloated and cramping, but there was palpable relief in knowing she had some control over the outcome of all of this.

Telling Matt hadn’t been an option in the slightest. He was forward-thinking for someone so devoutly Catholic but even he had his limits and she wasn’t willing to find them out, or even worse, to listen to him beg her to have a baby that was only a one-in-three chance his. Matt might have changed in myriad ways since they were last together but she knew a few things about him stood, chiefly that he still very much so believed in fate, in timing, and in signs.

This would be an adventure he’d want to undertake no matter how ill-equipped the two of them were, no matter how poorly matched they were at the end of the day. Best to neither risk being saddled with his judgment nor raise his hopes onto something she knew she did not want.

Steve and Bucky? Different ball game. They were people with whom Natasha could have seen herself doing this in another world. They were committed both to one another and to mutual decision making, a good sign in any human let alone men. They understood that agreeing to raise a child together meant knowing one another’s value systems intimately, settling on the core values to be passed along to an impressionable young human. They believed in preparation, planning and responsibility.

Sure, plenty of people had children on the fly – Natasha’s own parents among them – but she knew that even if she woke up one day in her thirties feeling very differently about them, she would want to do it Steve and Bucky’s way. Planning. Research. Forethought.

She felt incredibly lucky to be here, able to change the course before here instead of having her hand forced. If she ever did have a child, they would be loved and anticipated greatly.

But she wasn’t going to have one now, when she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt she wasn’t ready, able or willing.

That thought filled her with relief.

***

The only way Natasha could describe the experience was ‘underwhelming’.

The standard pinch-and-pull of a pap smear and several speculums was familiar. The room was sterile but small, almost as intimate as every doctor’s office she’d sat in for the last few weeks and making her question why this couldn’t have just been done there, why the whole rigmarole of hoop jumping to satisfy a checklist of requirements that were at best half bullshit meant to dissuade. The most difficult part of the entire experience had been walking into the clinic without engaging with the lone protestor, screaming at Natasha about murder and hell and judgment while waiving a horrific sign on a wooden stick.

Days later, Natasha would realize why that horrible image had been stuck so large in her mind from that moment on – it was a photograph she’d seen in college. It wasn’t an aborted fetus. It was an infant casualty of the Bosnian bombings in the nineties. Even had the watermark. What an idiot.

Once it was over, she sat in a recovery room with a heating pad and a large cup of apple juice, Maria at her side checking her vitals until they were sure her pulse was steady and strong.

“How do you feel?” Maria asked.

For the first time, Natasha saw a clearer picture of Maria than she’d ever had before. The clinical, matter-of-fact friend that she had always somehow imagined was equally as cool and distant in her work setting – surely never rude or unkind, but hardly nurturing in Natasha’s imagination – had given way to the reality of a person who sometimes stood beside people during hard and painful choices or hearing devastating news. She wasn’t cool or distant at all. Maria was calm but warm and empathetic, radiating a benevolent sort of authority that made even self-possessed-to-a-fault Natasha feel like she was in safe hands.

It was odd, to know someone for so many years and then tilt her head just so to find there was an entirely different filter across her than she’d ever thought to put there.

Nat reached out and laid her hand on Maria’s leg, the two of them pausing to look at one another, and Maria’s countenance softened into something so gentle that Nat could have cried.

***

The cramping and nausea came in waves for the next several hours and she popped the antibiotics given to her at the clinic to stave off any potential infection – pelvic inflammatory disease was nothing to fucking sneeze at – before settling back onto Tony’s couch with a hot water bottle in her lap and nearly a thousand channels of television that she was certain never got watched. His DVR was empty, naturally, and of every movie channel he could have possibly had access to, only one was playing something that looked vaguely interesting. Of course, it was halfway over. Unable to contend with the garish loops of commercials at any normal time and much less in her current state, she switched over to some ambient music station and left it, leaning her head back and closing her eyes.

It was over. She wasn’t pregnant anymore. It felt like the debris that had been blocking her only road was finally dragged away and a weight was off her shoulders. If there was any regret it was vague and distant, more a realization that a life she could have lived was now closed off. It made a rosy picture, sure, but not one that seemed like a life she wanted to lead.

Tony’s copious amounts of delivery from the Thai place on the corner sat out on his impressive kitchen island, all pale grey and white marbles and expensive, sleek utilitarian design. This was far from her first time in Tony’s apartment but it was certainly the first time she had spent the night, had enough time to poke around and see the space where her boss and close friend spent most of his time.

Best friend, maybe. She hadn’t thought to stick the label on anyone but Clint in the last few years, though Wanda had come close and Jess had possibility.

Wanda. Fuck. The pain meds mitigated her anxiety down to something less sharp than it might have been but it still reared its ugly head when she thought about the sudden shift in reception, how Wanda had taken her hands away and put them back in her own lap. A disconnect had happened in that moment and there wasn’t a lot of question as to why. Clearly this had been a divide they weren’t meant to weather, and the idea of losing Wanda’s friendship made Natasha feel sick.

It also made her a little angry. Maybe she’d be angrier when the Vicodin wore off.

The Vicodin had not worn off when Wanda arrived a few hours later, an already-wilting bouquet of lilies in one hand and a wide-eyed, nervous expression on her face. There were a few cursory glances around – Natasha suspected Wanda had never seen the inside of Tony’s apartment before – before they were back in the living room, Natasha dropping back into her nest of pillows and throw blankets while Wanda stood uncomfortably near the coffee table, hands twisting the cellophane around the stems.

Typically there would be nothing Natasha would hate worse than the idea of Wanda scared around her – she’d taken such care to help her out of her shell – but she was admittedly still a little bitter about the reception before. It’s not like Wanda had to buy balloons or do cartwheels or throw her a party; she had just been hoping for something more along the lines of support than Wanda’s quick avoidance and tacit silence.

But here she was with flowers, so who knew.

Natasha looked up at her, quietly leaving space for whatever it was she wanted to say. Wanda, wriggling on the hook, sighed and looked down at the lilies for a long moment.

“I’m sorry,” she began finally, “I know what that must have looked like to you but it’s not _that,_ I promise, I just…” she faded off, shrugging her shoulders and looking Natasha in the eye with something like shame, “I did not know what to say that could make you feel better.”

Natasha’s face softened. Wanda couldn’t tell a lie believably with a gun to her head, there was no reason to assume she was lying here.

“And we don’t…” she trailed off again, plopping to sit on one of the white chairs, “We don’t talk about that kind of thing where I’m from. Not my country, I mean, my family. We were not open about things like that.”

A beat passed while Natasha tongued the inside of her cheek, considering that perhaps that repression had a lot to do with why Wanda fell in love with Pietro.

“But I am glad you felt like you could tell me, and I am sorry if I made you feel like that was a mistake. That was never my intention. You once listened while I told you something I thought I could never tell anyone, and…” Wanda stopped there, some other thought dying on her tongue before it could make it out of her mouth. Natasha watched her chew on it for a moment and ultimately swallow it again, only offering another shrug of her narrow shoulders and a heft of the lilies with a small, hopeful smile. “I don’t know what flowers are supposed to do at a time like this but it seemed like a nice thing, to get some for you.”

Natasha watched Wanda’s hopeful, wide face and felt her eyes brim with tears she could no longer blame on the hormones. Wanda was so open-hearted and real with her, how could she have ever thought she’d turned her back on her? Feeling sheepish and ashamed, Natasha climbed out of her spot and reached across for Wanda, whose face lit up with relief as she moved the flowers out of the way to embrace her friend.

“There is nothing you could tell me that would make me not love you,” Wanda’s voice broke only a little, but it was enough to make Natasha cry in earnest, “I’m sorry if I made you doubt that.”

In all the insanity of building a new life, Natasha had almost forgotten how badly she had missed her. Standing in Tony’s living room, she missed her now for every moment she forgot to over the last few months, a heavy ache in her chest.

Too tired to do anything else, Nat wrapped her arms around her friend and buried her face in her shoulder, noting how familiar she smelled: like a body spray she always caught whenever she’d waltz in, the store, and somehow the old apartment itself. The hint therein was a little jarring and reminded her of naked brick walls, of her gray comforter set kicked into a ball, of Clint wrapping his arms around her. A jolt of something like nausea hit her gut but was gone in an instant, Wanda’s hand sweeping comfortingly over her back, the bump of her many silver rings chasing it away.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you,” Natasha finally said through a sniffle, not letting go, “I’m sorry I got to California and didn’t make you a priority.”

“A lot happened very quickly, it’s not your fault.”

“It won’t happen again,” she assured, resolute as she pulled away to brace her hands on Wanda’s shoulders, both their eyes pink but both of them pulling together something closer to a smile, “I promise, if I have to fly you out there on my own dime we’re not going this long without seeing each other again, okay?”

“Yes, okay,” Wanda agreed, letting Natasha pull her to the couch.

Wanda curled up close to Natasha’s side, resting her head on her shoulder, and the two of them watched with half-interest while some reality show dragged along on the tv screen for a few silent minutes. Natasha knew this conversation wasn’t over; whatever had been up with Wanda, it was still there and needed addressing. Maybe this was too tender a time to start poking for the underlying sore spot, so Nat began making quiet plans for how to broach the subject. Get her out to dinner, maybe back to the Japanese place, get Tony’s car again and hit the town.

Wanda shifted and slumped, her posture somewhat defeated, as she pulled the blanket up over both of their laps.

“So,” she said tiredly, as if too exhausted for giving a reveal with any flourish, as if it were putting down a heavy weight that had been zapping her energy to nothing, “I suppose now is a strange time to tell you that I’m pregnant.”

 

 

 

~Epilogue~

 

September 14th, 12:04am

Sound asleep in her California apartment, Natasha was dreaming about fish again. A koi pond on the edge of nowhere, surprisingly warm when she dipped her hands in to run them along the sleek body of the orange and white fish. She was no longer trying to catch it and pull it from the water, no more seizing the fish for her own means; though she hardly understood her own motivations on the matter, she simply wanted to pet the fish, feel her fingertips glide down its strange, silky skin, feel the wisps of its tail brush through her fingers.

She reached down to grasp it gently as the fish passed through, and it jolted her with a vibrating buzzing that made her jump in her sleep. Electric eel? What the hell? It jolted her again, the buzzing familiar to the core of her soul and without realizing where the veil dropped and reality picked up, she realized she had pried her foggy eyelids apart and that she was holding her phone.

It was ringing, buzzing in her hand. Tony. 12:04am.

Despite the hour, she smiled. Tony always did need to be dramatic on her birthday.

Natasha pressed the phone into her mess of red hair, smiling, “You just gotta get one in before everybody else, don’t you?”

On the other end, something like sirens could be heard cutting in and out. Tony’s voice started with “I-“ and then broke into deep gasps, sobs, like he couldn’t catch his breath. There was shouting, utter cacophony in the background while he breathed hard into the phone.

Natasha bolted upright in bed, eyes wide and a cold animal fear in her gut, “Tony!? Tony, what’s wrong? Tony talk to me-“

He stammered through gasps, a few hard consonants but nothing he could hold enough to form a word.

Nat remembered after the divorce, when Tony would have panic attacks in his office. She’d sat down on the carpet beside him for one, helped him ride it out by naming things he could see, things he could touch, things he could smell but that required being right there to anchor him; there was no telling how that might work over the phone. Something was deeply, deeply wrong.

“Tony, listen to my voice, okay?” Natasha said as calmly as she could, not noticing that her hands were shaking, “I need you to take deep breaths, okay? Take a deep one in and hold it-“

The sound of gasping, panting interrupted her; he wasn’t listening. Couldn’t listen. The feeling of utter helplessness that had overtaken her made Natasha want to vomit.

There was a shuffling on the other end of the line, like the phone was being dropped or maybe taken, and Natasha raised her voice in alarm.

“Tony!? Tony, are you there, can you hear me?!”

“Natasha?”

The female voice on the other end was cool and silky-low, about as monotone as her own.

“Natasha? It’s Claudia, can you hear me?”

There was a moment before she snapped back into action, nodding before she spoke and standing to pace out of sheer terror at not knowing what was happening, “Yeah, yeah, it’s me, what the hell is going on? Is Tony okay!?”

“He’s having a panic attack, the EMT’s are with him right now.”

EMT’s. Natasha’s heart fell to her toes.

“Natasha,” Claudia began carefully, “Tony’s-“

“What happened?” Natasha exhaled quickly, cutting her off, “What the fuck is going on?”

There was a hitch, a pause, where Claudia took a breath.

“The Brownsville store caught fire.”

Natasha gasped out loud, covering her mouth.

“It’s gone, Natasha. The whole thing is gone.”

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well this took a lot longer than I planned, but we're here! Lascivious, the second part of the 4-part Salacious Saga, is finished and we're halfway home. 
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to leave kudos, comment, or find me on Tumblr - thank you in general to everyone who chose to read and stuck it out with me through this insane, turbulent last 12 months. I had some huge life changes that directly affected my posting and writing and I really appreciate all of you who were patient and kind to me through all of that. 
> 
> That being said, Part 3 is already planned for and will be posted at the end of December to give me a much-needed break to work on a few other small projects (Antianeirai, for one, and the thousand Punisher fics that I already know are coming). 
> 
> ****UPDATE** Part 3 has been pushed back to mid-to-late January due to a health and family emergencies that (naturally) occurred right around the same time. Please see the Tumblr and track the "personal" and "updates" tags for further updates. Thank you.**
> 
> Please come find me on Tumblr at http://noccalula-writes.tumblr.com in the interim for updates and sneaky-peeks at Part 3 and all the other shit I do with my time. 
> 
> (thank you thank you thank you)  
> <3  
> Noccalula


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